Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born on 31st July 1965 in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, England. She attended Tutshill Primary School and then Wyedean Comprehensive before going to Exeter University to studied French, having been encouraged by her parents, who said that this could lead to a great career as a bilingual secretary. On graduating from Exeter University she spent her first years at work as ‘the worst secretary ever’.
In 1990, aged 26, she moved to Portugal as an English teacher with classes in the afternoons and evenings, leaving her mornings free for writing. Her first two books were abandoned as being ‘very bad’ while her third was based on a boy who found out he was a wizard and was sent off to wizard school. While in Portugal she met and married a Portuguese journalist. Their daughter, Jessica, was born in 1993. After her marriage ended in divorce, Ms Rowling and her daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where she set herself a deadline—to finish the third novel before starting work as a French teacher. She wrote at a café table while Jessica was napping.
Having obtained a grant to finish her novel from The Scottish Arts Council she eventually sold Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone for a modest sum to Bloomsbury (UK). While working as a teacher the American rights for Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone where bought for enough money to enable her to give up teaching. Bloomsbury Children’s Books published the book in the UK in June 1997.
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone won The British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize. Renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the book was published in the USA in September 1998 by Arthur A Levine Books/Scholastic Press. The sequel, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets was published in July 1998 (UK) and June 1999 (USA). Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban was published in July 1999 (UK) and September 1999 (USA).
When all three novels occupied the top three slots in The Times bestseller list Ms Rowling had become an international literary sensation. By the summer of 2000, the first three books had sold over 35 million copies in 35 languages and earned approximately £300 million.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth and at some 636 pages almost as long as the previous three books put together, was the first in the series to have a simultaneous global release, at 12 midnight on the 8th July 2000. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire had a first printing of 5.3 million copies with advance orders of over 1.8 million
If that wasn’t impressive enough the sales for the next two books in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (June 2003) and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 2005), sold 5 million in the US and 1 million in the UK and 7 million in the US and 2 million in the UK in the first 24 hours respectively
More than 300 million Potter books have been sold worldwide since part one was published in 1997 and JK Rowling’s fortune was estimated £600million in 2005.
She finally came with the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on 21st July 2007, the seventh and final book in the series. Early figures are showing that all previous records are going to be broken, with some 2.6 million copies being sold in the first 24 hours in the UK alone. You can yourself imagine the figure worldwide.
