| J.K.Rowling |
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Joanne Kathleen Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter series of books, was born in Chipping Sodbury, near Bristol, in southwest
England. Her birthday, as all true Harry Potter fans know, is on July 31, the same
as her famous boy-wizard hero.
The family, including her parents and younger
sister Di, lived in Yate and then Winterbourne, also near Bristol. Her father worked on airplane engines for Rolls Royce.
When Joanne was nine, the Rowlings moved to Tutshill, near Chepstow, England, close to the border of Wales.
After graduating from public school with top honors
in English, French, and German, Rowling went on to study French at the University of Exeter. She earned her degree in 1986
and over the next several years held a variety of secretarial jobs, including one at a publishing firm, where she had to send
out rejection letters to prospective authors.
What she really wanted to do, however, was write. Rowling wrote her
first story, Rabbit, about a rabbit with measles, at age five or six. Later, she tried her hand
at writing novels, for adults. But she never finished writing any novel before she wrote the Harry Potter books.
Rowling started writing the first Harry Potter
book in 1990. The idea for Harry—a lonely, downtrodden 11-year-old orphan who learns he is actually a wizard when he
is magically invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—came to Rowling while she was stuck on a delayed
train between Manchester and London. Although she left England a short time later to teach English in Portugal, Rowling continued
to flesh out Harry's story.
Rowling returned to Britain in 1993, settling in Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near her sister. Divorced after a
brief marriage in Portugal and now with a baby, she suffered through a period of poverty and depression while she struggled
to earn a living and take care of her daughter, Jessica. It was during this difficult time that she finally completed Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was renamed Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone for the U.S. edition.
Following its publication in Britain
in June 1997, the book quickly became a hit with children and adults alike and won numerous awards, including the British
Book Awards' Children's Book of the Year. Rowling always envisioned the book as part of a seven-volume series—one book
for every year that Harry spends at Hogwarts—and a new Harry Potter book appeared every year for the next three years.
These were Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), and Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire (2000). These were followed by two short books from Harry Potter's world, Quidditch Through the Ages
and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2001). The profits from those two went to a British charity, Comic Relief.
Rowling's
road to fame and fortune may have been a bit rocky at times, but her success has been sure. In 2000, the 35-year-old author
became the highest-earning woman in Britain, netting more than £20.5 million (about $30 million) over the previous year. She
received an OBE (Order of the British Empire), a medal of achievement awarded by the queen, in March 2001. At the end of that
same year, she married her second husband, Dr. Neil Murray. On March 23, 2003, Rowling's second child, David Gordon Rowling
Murray, was born.
On June 21, 2003, three months after
David was born, the fifth book of the Harry Potter series was released. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix broke—no,
shattered—no, obliterated—the previous record for first-day sales by a book, which had been set by Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire. The fourth book sold 372,775 copies in the United Kingdom the day it was released; the fifth one sold
almost 1.8 million. The United States sales figures were even more impressive. All told, Order of the Phoenix sold about seven
million copies the day it was released.
The Harry Potter books have been translated into more than 55 languages, and
it has been estimated that more than 250 million copies have been sold around the world. The first three books have been made
into films: Sorcerer's Stone made more than $950 million; Chamber of Secrets, more than $850 million; and Prisoner of Azkaban,
more than $650 million, as of July 2004, when the third was still in theaters. All three are among the top twenty highest-grossing
films of all time.
In February 2004, Forbes magazine estimated that Rowling had £576 million, or more than a billion
dollars. This would make her the first person ever to become a billionaire from writing books.
Rowling gave birth to a baby girl,
Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, on January 25, 2005.
Source: factmonster.com
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