The Fantastic Trio

Joanne "Jo" Rowling OBE, DLitt (born 31 July 1965^[1]), writing as J. K. Rowling,^[2] is an English author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold over 325 million copies.^[3]

The 2007 Sunday Times Rich List estimated her fortune at £545 million (about $1 billion US), making her the first person to become a US-dollar billionaire by writing books.^[4] She is ranked as both the 136th richest person ^[5] and the 13th richest woman in Britain.^[6] In 2006, Forbes named Rowling the second richest female entertainer in the world ^[7] and ranked her as 48th on the 100 most powerful celebrities list of 2007.^[8]

Early life

See also: Harry Potter influences and analogues

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling and Anne Volant on 31 July 1965 at Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16.1 km) northeast of Bristol.^[1][13][14] Her sister Dianne (Di) was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old.^[13] The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four where she attended St Michael's Primary School,^[15] later moving to Tutshill, near Chepstow, South Wales at the age of nine.^[13] As a child, Rowling enjoyed writing fantasy stories, which she often read to her sister. "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it," she recalls, "Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee".^[9]

When Rowling was a young teen, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind", gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels.^[16] Mitford became Rowling's heroine and she subsequently read all of her books.^[17] She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College. Rowling has said of her adolescence, "Hermione is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was 11, which I'm not particularly proud of".^[18] Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth [12th grade] owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books. "Ron Weasley isn't a living portrait of Sean, but he really is very Sean-ish."^[19] Of her musical tastes of the time, she said "My favorite group in the world is The Smiths. And when I was going through a punky phase, it was The Clash".^[20]

Rowling read for a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter, which she says was a "bit of a shock" as she "was expecting to be amongst lots of similar people–thinking radical thoughts." Once she made friends with "some like-minded people" she says she began to enjoy herself.^[21]

With a year of study in Paris, Rowling moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, she developed the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry.^[13] When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.^[13][22]

On December 30, 1990, Rowling’s mother succumbed to a 10-year battle with the condition multiple sclerosis.^[13] Rowling commented, “I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter".^[23]

Rowling then moved to Porto, Portugal to teach English as a foreign language.^[24] While there, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes on 16 October 1992.^[25] They had one child, Jessica, who was named after Jessica Mitford. They divorced in 1993.^[26]

In December 1994, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near her sister in Edinburgh, Scotland.^[13] Unemployed and living on state benefits, she completed her first novel. She did her work in numerous cafés (e.g. Nicolson's Cafe and Elephant House Café), whenever she could get Jessica to fall asleep.^[13][27] There was a rumour that she wrote in local cafés to escape from her unheated flat, but in a 2001 BBC interview Rowling remarked, "I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat in Edinburgh in midwinter. It had heating."^[27]