Abhimanyu Kukreja
Joanne Rowling is a British fiction writer who shot to fame with her famous Harry Potter fantasy series. Better known as JK Rowling, she was initially advised to use her initials instead of her first name because the distributors feared that young boys would not buy books written by a female author!
Joanne did not have a middle name hence she chose `K` for Kathleen that was her paternal grandmother`s name. However, Kathleen is still not a part of her legal name.
Lovingly called `Jo`, Rowling was born on 31st July 1965 at Yate, Gloucestershire (England), 16.1 kms northeast of Bristol to Peter James Rowling and Anne Volant. When she was 4 years old, her family moved to Winterbourne where she was admitted in St Michael`s Primary School.
Her stint with fiction writing began in her childhood. She used to fantasise about different characters and write stories that she used to narrate to her sister Diana. One of her earliest fictional narrations was about her sister wherein she imagined Diana to fall in a rabbit hole where she was fed strawberries by a rabbit family. One of her first stories was about a rabbit called `Rabbit` who fell sick with measles and was visited by different animal characters
.After clearing her school, she was admitted to University of Exter. Initially Rowling had a tough time in the University, but soon she met some like-minded people that made her college days more knowledgeable and joyous. She studied French and Classic in Paris and then moved to London as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.
It was during this time that her mind first struck with the idea of Harry Potter. One day, JK Rowling`s train trip between Manchester and London was delayed by 4 hours. It was between these four hours that she thought of a young boy attending the school of wizardry. Immediately after her train reached her station, she rushed home at her Clapham Junction flat and began writing without wondering that one day her books on Harry Potter would be the most sold out children`s fantasy series.
When she was a teenager, her aunt detected her passion for writing and hence gifted her a copy of Jessica Mitford`s autobiography, Hons and Rebels. The book was loved by JK Rowling and prompted her to read all her books. Jessica Mitford became Rowling`s inspiration and her heroine. Rowling`s imagination and creativity was visible after a turquoise Ford Anglia owned by her best friend inspired her to write one of her books.
On December 1994, she completed her first book. This was the time when Rowling and her daughter used to live in Scotland and were short on finances. She managed her living on state benefits. She wrote her first book in different cafes like the Elephant House Cafe and the Nicolson`s Cafe.
In the year 1995, Rowling completed her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher`s Stone. Her economical status was poor as Rowling wrote this manuscript on an old manual typewriter.
The book was initially rejected by twelve publishing houses. Rowling struggled for a year before a small publishing company named `Bloomsbury` gave her the green signal. Rowling was paid 1500 Pounds by editor Barry Cunningham who advised her to continue with some day-job side by side as they had little chance to make money on children`s novel. They agreed to publish the book because of the fact that the editor`s 8-year-old daughter was given the first chapter to be reviewed by her father wherein she immediately demanded the next chapters!
In another few months, an auction was held in the United States of America for the rights to publish the first Harry Potter book. Scholastic Inc got those rights and paid Rowling a staggering USD 100,000 that made Rowling faint. The book was released with the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Within months the book won it`s first award, Nestles Smarties Book Prize. It continued winning awards as it grabbed the prestigious British Book Award for Children`s book of the year.
Rowling continued writing her books on Potter and her second and third books also won the Smarties Prize making her the first author to win the award three times continuously in a row. Harry Potter and the Philosopher`s Stone and Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Azkaban, both were the recipients of the prestigious prize.
Currently, Rowling has written seven parts of the Harry Potter series where the last three books have been the fastest selling books in history, grossing more than what a blockbuster film could do! The Harry Potter series has already sold over 325 million copies and is still selling more. The book has also been released in 65 different languages world-wide.
On 21st December 2006, Rowling revealed that she would be writing the last Harry Potter book. She completed writing her seventh book on 11th January 2007. JK Rowling considers the seventh volume to be the last of the Harry Potter series that has excited children throughout the world. Although, Rowling said that she would never say `no` to another series, but she maintained that this looks like a perfect ending for Harry.