The Story of J.K. Rowling

Creator of the most famous and best loved character in contemporary fiction, J.K Rowling is also the author of her own escape from a depressing existence on the verge of destitution. On the one hand, there is J.K Rowling who wrote the ‘Harry Potter’ novels, ‘The Casual Vacancy’ and ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’; the literary phenomenon of the nineties and present day. On the other, there is Joanne Rowling (the ‘J.K’ was her agent’s marketing notch), a dreamy, rather shy, but passionate woman whose brilliance in translating her dreams into prose changed her life. In January 1994, she was broke and jobless, struggling to bring up a young child in a small rented flat in Edinburgh. Just six years later, with her first book transformed into a major Hollywood film, she was reportedly worth £65 million (Smith 2001).

Joanne is most well known as the author of the bestselling Harry Potter series of seven books, published between 1997 and 2007, which have sold over 450 million copies worldwide, are distributed in more than 200 territories, translated into 73 languages, and have been turned into eight blockbuster films. She has also written two small volumes, which appear as the titles of Harry’s school books within the novels. ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ and ‘Quidditch Through the Ages’ were published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books in March 2001 in aid of Comic Relief. In December 2008, ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’ was published in aid of the Children’s High Level Group and quickly became the fastest selling book of the year (Little, Brown 2014).Rowling has also written books for adult readership, releasing the tragic comedy ‘The Casual Vacancy’ in 2012 and using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, the crime fiction novel, ‘The Cuckoo...

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