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Harry Potter strikes again!
Harry Potter, magic, imagination, childhood ... these are just some of the countless words that revolve around a single person today. A person, namely, J.K. Rowling ... the creator of Harry Potter and all the extraordinary enchantment surrounding her books.
J.K. Rowling was born in Chepstow, Gwent in 1965, and her full name is Joanne Kathleen Rowling. She started her writing career at the age of six years, when she wrote a story called Rabbit. Years later, divorced and living on public assistance, Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, sitting at a table in a cafe, looking after her daughter during her naps. For several years, she worked on the book in her quiet moments, while her daughter napped. When once, her manuscript was finished, several publishers turned her down. It was long before one took interest.
In 1997, Bloomsbury bought and purchased Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. This was when her life took on a dramatic transition. Since then, the Harry Potter series has won numerous awards and become a tremendous success around the world. J. K. Rowling has won the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Whitbread Award for Best Children’s Book, a special commendation for the Anne Spencer Lindbergh Prize, and a special certificate for being a three-year winner of the Smarties Prize, as well as many other honours. Rowling’s personal fairytale, however, is not at all near an end yet ...
Harry Potter — the conception
Rowling first thought of Harry while riding a train back in 1990. “Harry just strolled into my head fully formed,” she says. “I was taking a long train journey from Manchester to London in England and the idea for Harry came to my head. At that point it was essentially the idea for a boy who didn’t know he was a wizard, and the wizard school he ended up going to.”
Harry Potter comes to life
In 1998, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published in the United States, kicking off Harry-mania. All of a sudden, the world discovered that kids were reading again. What was more? Their parents wanted to read the same books with equal zest!
The second and third books were published in the spring and fall of 1999. The release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on July 8, 2000 became a major celebration the world over, with bookstore events occurring at midnight nationwide. The book sold an unprecedented three million copies in the first 48 hours of release. According to Publishers Weekly, it was “the fastest-selling book in history.” The fifth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released last year, 2003, and took the world by storm.
To date, over a quarter of a billion books have been sold, and have been translated into 61 languages and distributed in over 200 countries. All five books have appeared on bestseller lists in the United States, Britain, and around the globe.
For each of Harry Potter’s seven years at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, J. K Rowling has assigned a separate book. So far, five have been published, and readers world over can’t wait to gobble down the next two. Recently, the movie for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released, and is setting new standards in the American film industry.
Rowling states, “I am an extraordinarily lucky person, doing what I love best in the world. I’m sure that I will always be a writer. It was wonderful enough just to be published. The greatest reward is the enthusiasm of the readers.” J. K. Rowling currently resides in Scotland with her husband and two children.
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