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| | HP Book Facts Information, facts and guides from all of the books in the Harry Potter Series. | 
10-05-2003, 08:05 PM
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| | Pogrebin
Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Here
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The life of Joanne Rowling
© by Jalita J. 2003
Joanne Rowling (who likes to be called Jo) was born in Chipping Sodbury in Scotland July 31st 1965. She thinks having been born in a town with such a strange name may have influenced her liking for odd names. She lived in Yates, which lies just outside Bristol in the south west of England, and moved later to Winterbourne, on the other side of Bristol. There she and her younger sister Di, used to play in the streets with two siblings who had Potter as a surname.
Jo wrote her first book when she was six years old. The book was called Rabbit, about a rabbit called Rabbit. She admits now that they were very dull. 'He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee. And ever since Rabbit and Miss Bee, I have wanted to be a writer, though I rarely told anyone so. I was afraid they'd tell me I didn't have a hope,’ she has said.
When Jo was nine, they moved again, this time to Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean. Tutshill was a small place, practically just a street with a church and school at the end of it. She did like the school, but not her first teacher; Mrs. Morgan, who, on the first day gave Jo an arithmetic test that Jo failed (she had never done any arithmancy before). Mrs. Morgan marked her as a stupid girl and placed her in the "stupid row" next to the door. Jo liked to take walks in the countryside with her little sister
The cottage Jo and her family lived in.
From Tutshill Primary, Jo moved on Wyedean Comprehensive. There she was the "quiet, freckly, short-sighted and not very good at sports" girl and her favourite subject was by far English. She also liked other languages, French for instance, even though it was really her mother that wanted her to take that language.
At school, Jo would entertain her friends at lunchtime with stories. She used to tell her equally quiet and studious friends long serial stories at lunchtimes. In these stories, Jo and her friends were heroic and daring. As she got older, Jo kept writing but she never showed what she had written to anyone, except some of her funny stories that featured her friends as heroines.
At Wyedean Comprehensive she also met her friend Séan Pherris a person who moved in late. This was a very important friendship for Jo and she thinks they connected because they were both 'outsiders'. Séan was the first of her friends to take the drivers licence and she remebers that they used to sit in Séan's turquoise Ford Anglia by the Severn Bridge and talk about life and drink. Ron has a lot of Séan in him; Nice and loyal, but never really first-elleven. Jo used to let Séan borrow essays from her.
After school, Jo attended the University of Exeter in Devon where she studied French and classic litterature. Her parents hoped that by studying languages, she would enjoy a great career as a bilingual secretary. But as Jo recalls, 'I am one of the most disorganised people in the world and, as I later proved, the worst secretary ever.' She claims that she never paid much attention in meetings because she was too busy scribbling down ideas. 'This is a problem when you are supposed to be taking the minutes of the meeting,' she said.
Before she was 25 and had come up with Harry, she had written two novels, but discarded them when she realised how bad they were. She thought of Harry Potter while on a train ride in 1990. She suddenly had a vision of a small elleven year old boy, who just found out he was a famous wizard. 'It is hard to explain to someone who doesn't write. It was the incredibly elated feeling you get when you've just meet someone whom you might fall in love with,' is how she describes the feeling of 'meeting' Harry. On that trainride she didn't have anything to write on, so she couldn't make any notes and had four hours to think because the train was delayed.
Jo thought of Harry on a trainride from Manchester to London
She moved to Portugal in 1993 and got married. In portugal she worked as an English teacher, while working on her third novel, about the boy named Harry Potter. She wrote a lot of her Harry Potter material in Portugal. Unfortunaty her marrige didn't last and Jo left her husband and moved back to Britain with her little daugher Jessica.
She moved into a flat in Edinborough, Scotland. She had no job, no money and a daughter to take care of. She says: 'You couldn't really look at my life and say: "Boy, you have done success with your life." I was 28, living on benefit'. It was an unhappy six months and she had a few dark periods where she couldn't write and she would usually keep on writing through everything.
She also wrote at cafès, especially at Nicholsons. They let her stay there because one of the owners was her brother in law, and besides, it was a big place. She likes to impress that she wrote in cafès because Jesscia fell asleep when Jo rode her in her carriage, and not to escape her unheated flat. She also dilsikes the ridicculous rumours about her having to write on napkins because she could not afford paper to write on. 'It was never that bad, the truth is bad enogh,' Jo said.
She wrote the first book in five years and got herself a litterary agent, Cristopher Little. Jo used the writer's name: J.K. Rowling. She did this because she did not want people to know she was female and she thought it looked good with a 'K' for Kathleen (a name she likes).
Many publishing houses, among them Puffing and Colins, rejected it. They though it was too long and borderschools were not politically correct. Only Bloomsbury was willing to take the chance and payed 2500 pounds for the book. Jo still needed to keep her job as a Frech teacher to support herself.
'It was the next best moment in my life after having my daughter,' she said. Her only lifetime ambition had come true.
Though, before the book came out, Jo's mother had died after suffering from MS for ten years. Her mother was the real booklover in the family and it would have made her mother really proud, so it kind of added a bit of poison to the publishing. It also coloured her first chapter. She had written about 15 different first chapter, but they all gave too much away. Jo says that she was kind of living it. It became cut and dry, no lingering discussion of what happened.
Jo in front of a poster of the cover of her second book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Jo's real success did not come before American Publishing houses ended up in a bidding war for the book. Scholastic won the war by paying Jo 105 000 dollars and thereby giving Jo the ability to work as a full time writer. 105 000 dollars was more money than Arthur Levine had ever payed for a book, let alone a debutante.
It was not untill the third Harry Potter book, the Prisoner of Azkaban, came out, that Harry Potter became really popular. It was the first time three books of the same author had been on top of the NY Times Best Seller list. She became a world superstar and her readings begun to resemble pop concerts.
The Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in the series, was eagerly awaited. Bookshops all over the worlds launched the book on 8th July 2000 at the stroke of midnight. It immediatly became a best seller.
It was not long before they wanted the fifth one, but Jo got a writing block. She had litteraly started the books right after she had finished the previous ones. She was overworked and needed a break. Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released 16 July 2005, to similar reactions as to the previous two. Fans are now eagerly awaiting the 7th and last installement of the series. Jo is taking a break from writing before beigining serious work on the bittersweet ending.
It was not only the writer's block that was a hinderance for her writing, the books were to be made into films. The Philosopher's Stone was released in November 2001, Jo was petrified when she sat down to actually watch the film. What if they had taken horrible liberties? But they had not, and Jo was happy with it. The second film came out a year later and the third film will be arrived in heatres in June 2004 and the fourth in November 2005.
Jo has also written two books for Comic Relief. Comic Relief is a group of comedians seriously commited to help end the poverty and injustice in the UK and the poorest countries in the world. Jo wrote Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages to help raise money.
Jo posing for Comic Relief
Jo married Dr Murray on boxing day 2001. In March 2003 she gave birth to her son, David, and two years later, January 2005, to a baby girl, whom they named Mackenzie.
Because of this she used three years to finish the 5th book. When the book came out it became a hit; It is the fast selling book ever and is on the best seller list. Jo did the finishing touches on the 6th book, before her last child was brought into the world and now she is yet again taking some well earned time off before focusing on the 7th book.
Jo has been accused of being a witch and promoting witchcraft (Wicca), even though she does not believe in magic. Especially Christian groups have used it as an exuse for a modern holocoust. Her books has been burnt and parents in North Carolina even try to ban Harry from the classrooms. Jo does not think that reason works tremendusly well with these people.
Jo does not think that people have the right to dictate what she writes just because she is creating reading material for someone's children. She wants to write books the way she feels they need to be and doesn't care if she scares them. It is not like she does care about her reades, but she thinks that she is the only person who should decide what she is going to write. If people find them offensive, then she gives this advice: 'Don't read them.'
Sources:
Bloomsbury.com
BBC News
"Harry Potter and I", a BBC Documentary, 2001.
J.K.Rowling Official Site - Harry Potter and more
Text updated 25 October 2005
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Graphics made by: Luna Laufghudd
Last edited by Nienna; 04-04-2008 at 05:06 PM.
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