JK Rowling: from unemployed to billionaire. JK Rowling earned the most JK Rowling is a famous philanthropist
British writer Joan K. Rowling, whose septology about the young wizard Harry Potter has been avidly read by children and teenagers around the world for twenty years, is not wasting time. Previously, she published several books that complemented the Potter universe and blossomed in the imagination of children the daily life of the inhabitants of Hogwarts. The latest among such additions is a luxuriously published book about “Fantastic Creatures”, of which the author can be rightfully proud:
In addition, Rowling is also working on scripts for a four-part series that intersects with Potter under the general title “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the first film of which was presented two years ago. The second installment, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, starring the now familiar Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, added an impressive cast that included Jude Law as a young Albus Dumbledore and Grindelwald himself. Wald), who, apparently, this time is destined for something more than a cameo role. The world premiere of the film will take place on November 14, and a day later Russian audiences will be able to see it in theaters.
In addition, she continues to work on a series of detective novels for adults, choosing for this role a separate literary pseudonym - Robert Galbraith. As part of a question and answer session on her website, she shared news in this field: her fourth novel, Lethal White, is already ready.
But the most intriguing and important thing for most of her audience was the following: JK Rowling is seriously going to return to writing books for children, because experiments in this genre attracted the attention of millions to her. It would not be rash to note that the writer succeeds in works for children and youth audiences much better than traditional fiction. Her novels are quite worthy, but they very quickly get lost in a series of numerous new releases and do not evoke the desire to re-read them.
According to her own statements, now that the next novel is finished, she is going to take on a children's book based on an idea that the author has had for about six years. And it will not be connected in any way not only with Harry Potter, but also with the world of wizards in general. And this provides extremely rich food for both thought and speculation, of which an endless sea will surely appear in the near future.
JK Rowling is not only the famous British writer and creator of Harry Potter. She is a well-known philanthropist and supports numerous organizations, including her own foundation, Lumos.” Four years ago, Rowling was even excluded from the Forbes list of billionaires; she gave away about $160 million to those in need, which is 16% of the writer’s fortune.
In 2005, Rowling founded her own foundation, Lumos, whose goal is to help orphans.
When asked why orphans, Rowling replied in an interview with The Sunday Times: “I saw a photograph of a boy in a small crib with bars and was speechless. That picture touched me so much because there is no one more defenseless than a child, perhaps with mental or physical disabilities, who has lost his family. “I suddenly realized how big of a problem it was, and that’s when it all started.”
However, the topic of orphans has always occupied JK Rowling, because the main character of her books, the young wizard Harry Potter, is also an orphan, he was left without parents in infancy. And Lumos is one of the spells in the book, it lights up a light on the end of a wand.
Rowling gave a long interview to the famous British television and radio host Lauren Laverne about the work of her foundation and helping orphans. During the interview, there was a broadcast on Facebook, and listeners had the opportunity to ask their questions to the writer.
The Philanthropist publishes Lauren Laverne's conversation with JK Rowling, in which Rowling talks about why she never answers email, how the problems of wizards and people differ, and whether it is possible to help all the orphans in the world.
About the Lumos Foundation
JK Rowling's charity Lumos was created in 2005, initially it was called Children's High Level Group, and in 2010 it was renamed Lumos - this is one of the spells in the Harry Potter books. The Foundation has set itself the goal of ensuring that no child remains in an orphanage: by 2030 in Europe, by 2050 throughout the world. The foundation promotes the idea of “deinstitutionalization,” which involves returning children from institutions to families and redirecting funds intended for the creation of orphanages to support community centers that help families.
The Foundation cooperates with the governments of various countries and international organizations, insists on changes to legislation, trains specialists, and advises government agencies.
Over 6 years, Lumos has trained 27 thousand specialists. The foundation has large programs in Moldova, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, as well as in Greece, Serbia and Ukraine. The Foundation advises government agencies in Japan and Malaysia. There is an American branch of Lumos, which conducts programs including in Haiti, and the organization will soon begin work in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This year, the foundation began working in Russia, for example, the KAF Foundation’s “Family for a Child” program was created jointly with Lumos. This is a training program for specialists in placing children from institutions into families.
The fund exists largely thanks to proceeds from the sale of J. K. Rowling's books. In addition, the foundation has private donors and a grassroots donation program. So, the foundation sells T-shirts via the Internet.
J. K. Rowling pays all administrative costs of the foundation, so all funds raised go to support Lumos programs.
— What an incredibly busy year for you! Of course, first of all, this is a theatrical production. You have been running the play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” for several months, which has received rave reviews from the audience, and the published script for the play has become a number one bestseller. On November 18, the film “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” based on your script, was released, and, of course, it is worth mentioning the novel “In the Service of Evil,” another bestseller under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The book came out in paperback this year. How do you manage to do all this?
— My family supports me, and I also never answer emails.
I realized that life becomes much easier if you forget about the things that you generally have to do. This is very annoying to others, but my priorities are my writing life, Lumos and my children. Children usually come first on this list, depending on how they behave.
Almost 10 years have passed since the last Harry Potter book was published. What's it like to immerse yourself in the world of magic again with the new Fantastic Beasts movie?
- 2016 was a truly magical year, because I really pulled away - not completely, of course; I can’t completely distance myself from Harry Potter. But I didn’t think about him for 6 or 7 years, and during that time I wrote “The Casual Vacancy” and the first book under the pseudonym Galbraith. I've written a few other things that will probably come out sooner or later, so I've had a really big break, but deep down I always knew that Fantastic Beasts was going to happen. And Harry Potter... it's a magnet in itself because the fans are still so enthusiastic, so passionate about its story. I don't think I'll ever leave Harry Potter behind forever, and to be honest, I don't want to.
- So you can return to him at any time?
- Many children and adults are now simply delighted that you have returned to the world of magic, and many say - even I heard this from my friends, but, of course, they tell you this all the time - that it is the books about Harry Potter instilled in their children a love of reading.
- I always say the same thing - and, believe me, I say it completely sincerely. For me, such words are truly the best assessment of my work. People tell me: “First I read books to my child, then he read them himself, then we stood in line together at midnight, and then we just bought several copies of each so as not to quarrel over the books.” Of course, I benefit from every copy sold - but that's not the point; I'm just incredibly pleased to hear this.
In addition, another phenomenon is very important for me personally, which I understand very well. I know that books that are steeped in my personal experiences at times like pain and loss mean a lot to readers who are going through difficult times. Especially from young people - and not only - I very often hear that my books have become an outlet for them, Hogwarts has become a safe haven, and the characters have become a real family. All this means a lot to me.
- So, in fact, we have come to the main topic of today’s conversation - the significance and importance of family for a person. After all, one of the main, key tasks of the Lumos Foundation is to support families all over the world.
- This is the key point. All research over the past 80 years indicates that the constant love and care of a significant adult is the basis for the normal development of a child, psychological, emotional and even physical development.
This doesn't mean that you have to be the perfect advertising family, with an average of 2.2 children, but that you literally need personal, individual, loving relationships. Usually your own family can give them to you, sometimes a new friend can give them to you.
But we know that today about 8 million children in the world are in orphanages, and it is known that about 80% of them are not orphans.
I think this is a very unexpected fact. In fact, many will find it difficult to change their perception and believe that the majority of children in orphanages are not orphans.
This is understandable, because they are also called “orphanages”, what else were you supposed to think? It seems that we are simply proceeding from this cultural premise, although there is little logic in this - after all, most of those present in the room today grew up in fairly prosperous countries, and we know that we no longer have such institutions, that’s what we’re talking about. But based on our cultural tradition, we are accustomed to thinking that an orphanage is a place for a child who simply has nowhere else to go. Unfortunately, this tradition is very far from reality. Today, thanks to numerous studies, we know for sure that such institutions are the most unsuitable place for a child.
I have seen babies who have learned not to cry, I have met babies who are ready to go into my arms, despite the fact that they saw me for the first time in their lives: anyone who has ever dealt with small children understands that they are all programmed for love, for the search for love. When a child cries, he is not necessarily hungry: he cries because he wants to be cared for. Such children are especially vulnerable and have serious problems forming attachments. Our film contains a reference to a Russian study that, compared to their peers, children who leave orphanages upon reaching their 18th birthday are 10 times more likely to be involved in prostitution, 50 times more likely to have a history of criminal activity, and 500 times more likely to commit suicide. 500 times. This is a massive tragedy that no one talks about.
Harry Potter, hero of Rowling's books, orphan
“Of course, it is obvious to any parent that if anything happens to them, an orphanage should be the very last option. Anyone would prefer their children to be raised by relatives or friends, or, as you said, to be cared for individually. But are there countries where this choice is not available? And there are parts of the world where parents have to abandon their children simply so that they do not starve.
— Yes, sometimes it’s just a matter of feeding the family, and the system of orphanages itself provides an incentive to family breakdown. So yes, this is a good question, I get asked this often.
We ourselves are to blame for this, we encourage this system with the very, very, very good intentions, we all in this room donated money to help children. This is normal, this is a basic instinct, we want to help children, and this is very commendable and noble.
In fact, however, it is likely that your donations feed into the very core of the problem - you yourself just mentioned that poverty is at the top of the list of reasons why children are sent to institutions.
The only way to feed your child is to send him to an orphanage, only there you can get help from medical specialists - this is why there are many children with disabilities in orphanages all over the world.
As a result, unfortunately, it turns out that even orphanages, which are created with the best intentions and in which everything is organized at the highest level, harm children, and this is confirmed by numerous studies.
Moreover, unfortunately, there are also institutions for children that actually operate like a business, because if donors willingly donate money to orphanages, their number increases. This happens not because parents die, but because orphanages are a magnet for money and volunteers - again, with the best intentions. They not only want to help children in orphanages, but also bring foreign currency with them to the country. And finally, the most frightening and shocking aspect is that such institutions are a real mecca for molesters and rapists.
Children are separated from their biological family, no one monitors what happens to them, and I already talked about their problems with forming attachments - so they are extremely easy to manipulate.
- So where does this happen? And why do orphanages still exist despite the fact that we know that they do not give anything good to children? Or are we going back to the financial cycle you described?
— Orphanages appear in places affected by natural disasters. In any country with high poverty levels. This happens all over the world: there are orphanages on every continent.
There will always be cultural differences. Sometimes the reason for the emergence of child care institutions is also the reason why they cannot be eradicated. I'm talking about poverty.
In a situation where there are tens of thousands of children in institutions, it is impossible to do without funds to organize retraining of staff, train people locally, create a new, more advanced system - everything requires money.
Therefore, when Lumos asks people for support, 100% of donations go to implement programs to help children... Sometimes we are talking about children who are hungry or very sick. 100% of the funds go to help our target group because I cover the operating expenses of the foundation. It is very important that people understand this.
— Recently on Twitter you drew attention to the problem of volunteers working in orphanages abroad.
— Yes, it started when I wrote something in support of Lumos. And as often happens when I post a tweet, many people responded to it - this is a completely normal process - and many asked me to retweet in support of their charities. And one of the responses asked me to support a charity that I'm doing a big favor for by calling it a charity because it's actually a "travel agency" for volunteers.
And I just got carried away, I couldn’t stop - in my opinion, this is correctly called a tweet storm. And in the end the communication was very tough.
“Voluntourism” is a term that is probably familiar to most of those present, but just in case, I’ll explain: it describes the phenomenon when people go abroad as volunteers, however, unlike volunteering as such, volunteerism does not bring any benefit to anyone.
So, volunteer tourists are usually young people who, of course, are guided by the best intentions. They go to orphanages, work with children, and then leave forever, thereby perpetuating attachment disorders in poor children.
And according to this agency that responded to my tweet, volunteering is a great “resume-brightening” experience, and that made me really sick.
I'm glad that in the end I didn't get personal, although I wanted to. But otherwise I would not have been able to fully convey my thoughts to the readers. I wanted to outline the situation for young people who are thinking about becoming volunteer tourists.
This agency, which operates in Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe, wrote that “many institutions have closed” - and this is exactly our merit, “Lumosa” - we are helping to close them - safely, returning children to their families or placing them for foster care. And then they wrote: “but we still have places where you can volunteer.” That is, they literally say: “everything is fine, there are still children in this country who live in terrible conditions, come and volunteer.” This upset me quite a bit and resulted in a tweet storm.
To all 18-19 year old young people who want to become volunteers, I can give one piece of advice: go work for a project that helps children in the community where they live; explore the situation; make sure you understand what you are doing and that you are truly helping. Otherwise, you may find yourself, with the best of intentions, supporting a system that actually harms children.
— What options do children have other than living on the street or ending up in an orphanage? Do such solutions exist?
- Of course, there are solutions.
It is important to note that when coming to a new country, our foundation is in no hurry to teach anyone or assure anyone that we have the right solution. On the contrary, each of the countries where we operate already has its own specialists who know what is best to do.
But they often do not have the funds and do not have the influence that, for example, some public organizations have. We are very fortunate that we work with the EU, we work with the UN and the WHO and have the opportunity to redirect the resources of these organizations. We, of course, invest our own funds, but we can help organize a whole package of support.
Joanne Rowling
- So what is the solution?
— Firstly, many have a financial interest in continuing the operation of orphanages. I say “orphanages” again – and again I don’t like this term.
Let these be institutions. We are often told: “We have a poor country, and if the institution closes, I will lose my income.”
We answer that in this case it is not necessary to lose your job. We give people the opportunity to retrain and become social or medical workers. We propose creating day care centers for children - essentially kindergartens - so that parents can go to work. We do not want to deprive people of their livelihood, we want to show how together we can effectively help children.
Here is one of the solutions we offer for institutions.
As I already said, sometimes children have very serious health problems, and of course we must provide them with food, medical care, etc.
In addition, systemic changes are needed, so we are working with government agencies to change legislation so that after closure, child care centers do not reopen. It is also very important to develop a foster care system. Yes, I have already said that, given the right support, 80 percent of children can return from institutions to their families, since they will be happily accepted there. However, if this is not possible, a well-trained foster family is needed.
— It seems that Lumos is systematically dealing with this problem. That is, it all started with a spell from the book about Harry Potter, and now we see real changes.
— Yes, according to our latest data, we have already helped 17 thousand children leave institutions, which I am very proud of.
We have a variety of programs - well-trained foster families, small family-type orphanages, where children receive constant individual care and attention, which is so important to them.
In addition, thanks to us, 15 thousand children did not end up in child care institutions, and the range of countries in which we work is constantly expanding, which I am also very proud of.
— Is this the main goal of Lumos?
- Yes. If you choose the main thing from today's conversation, I would like you to remember one thing: orphanages are a solvable problem. We can solve it once and for all.
8 million children is an incomprehensibly large number and very difficult to fully comprehend. But they can be helped, and we can do it.
Of course, we really need money. But, besides this, we need to change the mentality: if we change the thinking, we will change the lives of these children. I want everyone to think like this: “You don’t need to give money to this shelter, you need to study the problem and find out who is solving it, who can reunite families. That’s who I’ll give the money to.” If we do this, it will change a lot. Today, if someone tells you, “You know, they want to volunteer at an orphanage,” or “We’re building an orphanage,” you can explain the situation to them. And a new understanding of the problem itself will help break this circle.
— Joan, you have been involved in charity work for, I think, about 10 years, and you are probably very proud of what you have achieved?
- Of course, because I know children who managed to return to their families and who now want to help us.
I know one story. We met one girl, when we first saw her, she was very small: I thought she was 12 years old, but in fact she was almost 15 - this is how institutions influence even the physical development of children. Now she is an excellent motivational speaker who educates people about the importance of deinstitutionalization. Yes, our work is wonderful, and I think in about 4 thousand cases where the children we helped were in very poor condition, we actually saved them from death. This, of course, is also a great result.
- Amazing. You probably get a lot of support from Harry Potter fans?
“I’ve never seen such active, such passionate fans, and I’m really very proud of them.”
They help us raise funds and spread information. And yes, they are amazing.
- Well, since we started talking about these amazing people... When we announced this live broadcast onFacebook, we asked listeners to ask you any questions about the Lumos Foundation - and, of course, we were inundated with questions.
I have a few here, and the first one is from Ardith Haliti, this is a great question:
- The Lumos website says that - as we have already discussed - eighty percent of children in orphanages are not, in fact, orphans. What work is Lumos doing to ensure that the remaining twenty percent of real orphans also receive the love and care they deserve?
“Yeah, that’s a great question, I get asked all the time: “Some of them are orphans, so what are you going to do with them?”
The answer is: in some cases we need good foster families, and, of course, everything depends on the specific circumstances and needs of the child.
Sometimes small family-type orphanages are needed - like those previously created by the children's charity Barnardo's. They are as close to family conditions as possible - and we do this too.
Fostering a child with a local family is almost always the best placement option, but there are many other options depending on the country.
- Okay, now the next question, from Jerry King:
“I think that the story of Harry Potter gives hope to some orphans that one day a holiday will happen on their street. What do you think is the most important life lesson for a wizard?
— (Laughs) for a wizard... Well, I already said that the most important life lesson for a wizard is exactly the same as for Muggles. Because, ultimately, my books are about human nature. Even mastery of magic cannot solve all problems. The problems remain, just in a different form, people can still be intolerant and cruel.
So I will answer that the best life lesson for a wizard is the same as for all of us: “Do whatever you can, anywhere and with whatever means are available.” I think we should all try to follow this advice.
- Well, I think we can end the interview on this positive note. Thanks a lot. All that remains is to thank Joe - not only for the amazing pleasure your books have given children and adults around the world, but also for your dedication and for creating the Lumos Foundation, which changes the lives of children around the world. Thanks a lot!
Her name is actually Jo. But before the release of the first book about the young wizard Harry Potter, the publishers asked only for the initials J.K.Rowling to appear on the cover. In their opinion, a male audience might be put off by a book written by a woman. But after the story about a boy with a scar from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry sold millions of copies and became a bestseller, no one cared about the author’s gender—readers were waiting for a sequel.
Rowling has been writing since childhood. In interviews, she often says that she wrote her first fairy tale about Mr. Rabbit and Miss Bee at the age of 5 at the request of her younger sister. Already in elementary school, Rowling realized that her favorite subjects were literature and English, and her teachers understood this too: her first stories were read out in front of the whole class, making her feel special. However, Rowling grew up shy and was remembered by her classmates as a girl who lived in a fantasy world and was constantly writing things down in her notebook.
When Jo was 15, her mother became ill with multiple sclerosis. After 10 years of battling the disease, Joanne Anne Rowling has died. This tragedy left a big mark on the writer. “My biggest regret is that my mother never found out that I became a writer. I never told her about Harry Potter, but she would definitely like it,” Rowling said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. After the death of her mother, Joan decided to start life from scratch and went to teach English in Portugal, where she met her first husband. A year after their marriage, their daughter Jessica was born, and a few months later her husband kicked Rowling out of the house with a baby in her arms.
Without money, without work, without family, Rowling returned to Britain. She hasn’t communicated with her father since her mother’s death, and only her younger sister Dee is among her relatives. Rowling, still unknown to anyone, had literally hit rock bottom: she lived on an allowance of £70, which was barely enough to pay for a tiny apartment and the cheapest food. “I considered myself the biggest failure I knew,” Rowling describes her life at that time. The divorce led to a protracted depression, which, by the way, was embodied in the image of dementors - creatures from the fairy-tale universe of Potter who pull the soul and happy emotions out of people. In an interview with The Telegraph in 2006, Rowling admitted that death and the fear of death are the key to the Harry Potter books: the story begins with the death of the main character's parents and continues with Voldemort's overwhelming desire to become immortal.
According to rough estimates, Rowling now earns £77 per minute (approximately $120).
She receives income not only from the sale of copyrights to the book series, but also from a number of other commercial enterprises, one way or another connected with Potter: royalties for films, income from the release of products depicting the characters she created, income from merchandising. In total, the writer earned £545 million (more than $1 billion) from the magician's adventures - twice as much as John R.R. Tolkien on the stories of the hobbits. So it's hard to believe that the advance for the first book about a boy wizard, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which was rejected by publishers 12 times, was only £1,500 (just over $2,300). Bloomsbury published the book only because the 8-year-old daughter of the head of the publishing house, Alice Newton, read the first chapter and immediately demanded a continuation from her father.
For the recently divorced writer, who lived with her one-year-old daughter on welfare, it was a victory. The editor of the manuscript, however, kindly advised Rowling to find a job because “children’s books are no longer selling.” The first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is only 1000 copies, and the publishing house sent 500 books to libraries for free. But this was enough for the novel to be recognized as “the best children's book of the year” in the UK. The rights to the American edition of the novel were bought at auction for $100,000. Rowling focused on continuing the Potter story and by 2004 she became the richest woman in Great Britain.
Rowling's books take place in a fictional world that closely resembles the real one: good here does not always triumph over evil. Maybe this is the secret of Potter's crazy popularity among both children and adults. Books are being swept off the shelves. The latter's circulation was sold out at a rate unprecedented in the history of book publishing - 7,000 copies per minute. In 2011, this allowed Rowling to become the world's first female author to earn $1 billion from her work.
Since then, she has not appeared on the list of billionaires - due to her extensive charitable activities and UK tax policies. However, Rowling ranked 84th on the list of highest-paid celebrities in 2014, 93rd on the list of the world's most powerful women the year before, and 7th in 2015.
18 years have passed since the release of the first Harry Potter book. Books from that edition, released in hardcover with a circulation of 1,000 copies, now sell for more than $30,000. During this time, Rowling wrote 9 more books about the wizarding world. The series became the best-selling series in history, second only to the Bible, and the film franchise based on it is the second largest worldwide box office ($7.723 billion for 8 films) after the world of Marvel superheroes ($8.783 billion for 12 films). The Harry Potter brand is valued at $15 billion. Rowling also continues to make money from sales of the electronic version of the book, the rights to which are only owned by the website Pottermore.com, owned by the writer and opened in 2012 (it brought in $4 million in the first month of operation). There, the author communicates with fans of the series and posts new facts about the books for free access. By the way, she remains the only writer who won the rights from the publisher to sell an electronic version of her book.
In 2012, Rowling released a novel aimed at teenage and adult audiences, The Casual Vacancy (the book became the top bestseller of 2012 in the United States in the paperback fiction category). The advance for it was $8 million. In the first three days, sales of the book exceeded a million copies. The BBC bought the film rights to a series based on The Casual Vacancy, the first season of which was released in February this year. A little later, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, two novels about detective Cormoron Strike were published - “The Cuckoo’s Calling” and “The Silkworm”. And, despite the fact that before the release of the second detective story the truth of the authorship was revealed, Rowling promised to continue publishing under a man’s name.
Rowling donates the lion's share of her salary to charitable projects. In the 1990s, she worked as a secretary in the research department of Amnesty International in London, where she first encountered refugees from Third World countries. This work left a serious imprint on Rowling’s future life, and it was then that she came up with the idea for a novel about Potter.
In 2000, she founded the Volant Charitable Trust, which fights poverty. The foundation funds various organizations that help children and single-parent families, as well as research into multiple sclerosis. Two books in the Harry Potter universe - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch from Antiquity to the Present - brought in more than £15.7 million for another charity, Laughter Release, which also works on poverty issues. In 2005, Rowling co-founded the Children's High Level Group with MEP Emma Nicholson, which was later renamed Lumos. The Foundation is dedicated to creating acceptable conditions for the life and development of children around the world. To raise funds for Lumos in 2007, Rowling auctioned off one of seven handwritten copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard (repeatedly mentioned in Potter), which was auctioned for £1.95 million (the buyer was the online retailer Amazon.com ) and became one of the most expensive books in history. Rowling donated all proceeds from the sale of the book - about £19 million.
Rowling turns 50 on July 31, 2015. She is currently writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. A new book, “Career of Evil,” is promised for release in 2015. Just a few hours after the announcement of the new work, the book topped the list of popular pre-orders on Amazon. It also became known that Rowling's detective novels will form the basis of a series for BBC One.
In her 2008 Harvard commencement address, Rowling talked about how things don't always work out on the first try: “My greatest fear when I was your age was not poverty, but failure. There is no need to be afraid of failures - they are inevitable. It is impossible to live and not fail, unless you live so cautiously that you are, in fact, not living at all - in which case you obviously fail.”
On July 31, 2017, the most famous living British writer, the mother of the famous “boy who lived” JK Rowling, celebrated her fifty-second birthday.
We invite you to learn a few little-known facts about the life and work of the famous creator of Harry Potter. Let's go through some milestones in her biography...
At 6 years old
... Joan began to write. Her first creation was the book “Rabbit” about a little rabbit who had measles. The first and not very impartial critic was the mother of the future writer.
11 year old
... Joan became the prototype for Hermione Granger, an excellent student and, according to one of the Hogwarts professors, “an insufferable know-it-all.” “She’s a caricature of eleven-year-old me, which I’m not particularly proud of,” the writer said in an interview.
23 months
... Joan's first marriage lasted. She divorced her husband when she was 25. Rowling was left with a little daughter.
In 1990
…. Joan moved to Manchester, where she got a job as an English teacher. There she began sketching the future book about Harry Potter. The first notes appeared on a napkin when Rowling, struggling to make ends meet, was sitting on a train that was stuck on the road for four hours.
12 publishing houses
... refused to publish the first Harry Potter book. Only a year later the manuscript was accepted by the small London publishing house Bloomsbury. Even the editor-in-chief of the publishing house did not believe in success: he doubted that Rowling would make much money from children's books and advised her to find a permanent job.
Just a thousand
... printed copies amounted to the circulation of the first book about Harry. Half of them are distributed to British libraries.
1500 pounds
... made Rowling's advance for the first book about the young wizard.
Platform 9¾,
... from which the train departs for Hogwarts is not by chance located at one of London's largest stations - King's Cross. It was there that Rowling's parents met. Therefore, this place has been magical for her since childhood.
In November 2001
... the film “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was released. The writer insisted that films be shot exclusively in Britain and with the participation of British actors.
In the third Harry Potter book
...dementors appeared - creatures that suck out the soul. They were the result of clinical depression that Rowling suffered from. She even had thoughts of suicide.
11 million copies
... the final Harry Potter book sold out on its first day of sales in England and the United States.
In 2000
... Rowling was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
$15 billion
...in total the value of the Harry Potter brand is estimated.
... Joan remarried. Her chosen one was anesthesiologist Neil Michael Murray. The couple is raising two children.
In 2007
... Rowling auctioned off one of seven handwritten and illustrated copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a book of fairy tales mentioned in the pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book was purchased for £1.95 million by Amazon.com, becoming the most expensive modern book ever sold at auction. Joan donated the funds to charity.
In 2012
... Rowling released her first book for adult readers called The Casual Vacancy. The BBC made a mini-series based on this work.
17 years
... worked on the Harry Potter novel by JK Rowling. The work was completed in February 2007.
In June 2017
... it became known that Joan had begun work on a new novel - a fairy tale with political motives.
First in the world
... Joan became a billionaire writer. In general, we congratulate her on this!
The real name of the famous British writer J. K. Rowling is Joanna Murray. Many people know the author of the seven Harry Potter novels as Robert Galbraith. The writer uses the same pseudonym to write her equally popular detective stories.
Today Joan Kate Rowling is a successful literary figure, an outstanding personality with a worldwide reputation, a rich woman, screenwriter, film producer, happy wife, and caring mother of three children.
NewPackfonJoanna Kate Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 in an ordinary family living in the city of Waite (UK). The girl's father (P. J. Rowling) worked at Rolls-Royce, and her mother (J. Ann Rowling) was a housewife. When Joanna was two years old, her sister, Dianna, was born. In 1969 the family migrated to Winterbourne.
The writer's childhood was truly carefree. Numerous photos of the little girl Joanna posted online confirm this fact. And Rowling herself always remembers her childhood with a smile, as it was filled with fun games with her sister, family comfort and warmth, and the care of her parents. It was they who instilled in the girl a love of literature.
Junktale A little-known fact that many researchers miss concerns the beginning of the work of the modern star: Joanne Kate Rowling wrote her first story at the age of six, and from that moment the girl did not stop creating.
In 1974, the Rowling family moved to Tutshill, Wells. The change of residence was a real shock for the nine-year-old child, due to the fact that Joanne loved and valued her school friends very much.
After 6 years, a difficult event occurred in the life of the young lady: her mother fell ill. The rapid development of the disease led to the fact that Rowling's mother soon died from multiple sclerosis. Having buried her loved one, in 1990 Joanna decides to leave Tutshill and move to London.
Son Dakika Haberleri Having defended her diploma in French linguistics, the young girl received a position as a secretary at Amnesty International. During the same period, Rowling fell in love for the first time, so a year later she moved to Manchester with her first boyfriend.
One day, on a train heading from Manchester to London, the writer came up with the image of the same boy wizard in round glasses, familiar to all fans - Harry Potter.
"Harry Potter"
The year of publication of the first part of the novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997), is considered to be the start of Joanna Rowling's career. The circulation was 1000 copies. In November, this book received the Nesyle Smarties Book Prize. In 1998, Rowling received her first international award for her work, the British Book Award.
After such success and recognition of the writer’s work, an auction was held in the United States, the lot at which was the right to publish “The Philosopher’s Stone.” The American publishing house Scholastic Incorporation won the auction, paying $105,000.
Our Niva In the summer of 1998, a continuation of the novel, “The Chamber of Secrets”, was published; in 2000, the world saw the third part of the novel - “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. The fourth part, called “The Goblet of Fire,” was able to break all sales records: the volume was 373 thousand books in 24 hours.
In 2003, Rowling wrote and published the fifth part of the sensational saga - “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” In 2005, the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was published, which broke all previous book sales records: the volume amounted to 9 million in 24 hours. In 2007, the seventh part of the novel about a boy wizard, “The Deathly Hallows,” was completed and published.
Slate Magazine To date, all 7 parts of the fantastic saga have been translated into 70 languages. In addition, great films have been made based on JK Rowling’s novels, directed by:
- K. Columbus.
- A. Cuaron.
- D. Yates.
Rowling's other books
In addition to the novels about the little wizard from Hogwarts, the writer became famous thanks to other works.
The only book published under the pseudonym "Newt Scamander". This literary masterpiece is a spin-off story about the main little wizard. It describes events that took place 65 years before the appearance of the boy Harry.
JK Rowling transferred most of the money received from the sale of the book (about 13 million pounds sterling) to the account of the largest children's charity organizations.
The fairy tale “The Bunny Hare and her Cluttering Tree Stump” was written between 2007 and 2009. For this masterpiece of world literature for children, Prince Charles awarded the writer the Order of the British Empire.
JK Rowling - Knight of the Order | Mirror The novel “The Casual Vacancy” is the first work of the “social drama” genre from Joan Kate Rowling for adults and teenagers.
Also, the detective story “The Call (Cry) of the Cuckoo” made a lot of noise.
Personal life of JK Rowling
While working at Amnesty International in her youth, Rowling was looking for a new job. So, after reading an advertisement in The Guardian about a teaching vacancy, J. K. Rowling decided to leave for Portugal.
It was in the city of Porto that Rowling met her first husband, television journalist Jorge Arantes. Their wedding took place in the fall of 1992, and already in July 1993, the young family had a daughter, Jessica-Isabelle Rowling-Arantes.
Jessica, daughter of JK Rowling Despite the complexity of her relationship with her husband, the writer tried her best to keep the family together. Biographers suggest that Rowling was often subjected to scenes of jealousy, domestic violence, and beatings. Such rumors are confirmed by the writer’s confession about how her husband once beat her and then simply kicked her and her daughter out of the house.
In December 1993, Rowling, with Jessica in her arms (and 3 chapters of Harry Potter already written in her bag), was forced to go to Edinburgh (Scotland) to visit her younger sister.
In 1993, Rowling returned to England. Having become a single mother, she applied for state benefits (70 pounds), which became the writer’s only income. Despite her poor financial situation, she continued to work hard.
Due to bitter personal experience, the writer did not dare to start a family for a long time. She devoted all her time to her daughter and, of course, to creativity. Only 8 years later, Joan became a wife again. The writer's chosen one is anesthesiologist Neil-Michael Murray (5 years younger than her).
In 2001, the couple legalized their relationship, and in 2003 their son David was born. In January 2005, the couple had another baby, who was named Mackenzie. In her first interview after giving birth, J.K. Rowling stated that she was truly happy, and the reason for her boundless joy was her beloved children and a sincerely loving man.
- Before the first publication of Harry Potter, it was the American publishing house Scholastic Incorporation that suggested Rowling use a pseudonym. The author chose to add her grandmother’s initials to her name – Kathleen. This is how the pseudonym J. K. Rowling appeared. Even despite her official surname Murray, Joanna continues to write under a pseudonym, which brought her worldwide popularity.
Shazoo - Joanne Kate Rowling admits that today (as when creating her first book) she is inspired by the lyrical concerts of Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The writer says that she writes her masterpieces armed with pen and paper. Only after creating a draft by hand, the author types the text on a computer, then sends it to the publishing house.
- If there are no sheets of notepad at hand, she writes down thoughts on any objects. For example, the names of the faculties of the Hogwarts University of Magic were invented by J. K. Rowling on the plane and written down on a disposable paper bag.
JK Rowling today
Today, J. K. Rowling is the world's highest paid author. Rowling's entire literary legacy is valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, and the Harry Potter trademark itself is worth approximately $15 billion.
In the summer of 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child took place in London. Contrary to numerous rumors and fan assumptions, this work is not a full-fledged eighth part of the novel, but only a script for a theatrical production. The real authors of The Cursed Child are Jack Thorne and John Tiffany.
Cinema The work is a new story. It shows actions taking place 19 years after the events described in Deathly Hallows.
In September 2016, Rowling's Pottermore portal launched new applications, which are collections of additions to the main 7 parts of the fantastic saga about the wizard. The plots of these stories tell about several minor characters, about the history of the emergence of the Azkaban prison and the Hogwarts school of magic.
The Daily Dot In an interview with The Guardian, J.K. Rowling admitted that she is currently working hard on two works. New books will be published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
The writer noted that the “new items” have nothing to do with the character of Newt Scamander from the story “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which was filmed in America in the fall of 2016.
Bibliography
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
- Harry Potter And The Chamber of secrets
- Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
- Tales of Beedle the Bard
- Random vacancy
- The Cuckoo's Calling
- Silkworm
- In the service of evil
