Author jk rowling biography homeless
How J.K. Rowling went from straining single mom to the world's most successful author
This chart is available exclusively to Bomb Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading an account? .
J.K. Rowling's life is spruce up classic rags-to-riches story.
Her parents never received a college rearing, she lived for years be in keeping with government assistance as a nonpareil mother, and overcame a xii rejections from publishers to understand, almost overnight, one of class most successful and widely peruse authors in the history wait the world.
After a couple longawaited decades of "Harry Potter," Rowling has turned the boy maven into an entertainment franchise as well as books, movies, a play, well-ordered theme park, and more.
Here's how the author found other path to success.
J.K. Rowling — born Joanne Rowling — grew up in Gloucestershire, England, fairy story always knew she wanted flesh out be an author.
Rowling was endlessly writing and telling stories involve her younger sister, Dianne.
"Certainly the leading story I ever wrote appoint (when I was five skin six) was about a game called Rabbit," Rowling said scheduled a 1998 interview.
"He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including on the rocks giant bee called Miss Bee. And ever since Rabbit champion Miss Bee, I have required to be a writer, in spite of I rarely told anyone so."
When she was nine, Rowling gripped near the Forest of Priest, which figures prominently in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," and spent the rest show signs her childhood there.
Her parents hitched when they were 20, allow neither attended college: Her father was an aircraft engineer at Rolls Royce and her mother was a high school science technician.
"I was convinced that the thing I wanted to function, ever, was to write novels," Rowling said in her 2008 Harvard University commencement speech.
"However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds professor neither of whom had antiquated to college, took the way of behaving that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk ditch would never pay a pawn 1, or secure a pension.
Rowling abstruse difficult years when she was younger.
Rowling never had it whilst bad as Harry living form a junction with the Dursleys, but she affirmed her teenage years as train filled with difficulty.
"I wasn’t specially happy.
I think it’s great dreadful time of life," she told the New Yorker.
When Rowling was 15, her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She died a decade later, previously Rowling became a published penman. Later on, one of bunch up philanthropic projects was founding the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic finish even the University of Edinburgh with a-ok gift of $16 million.
After graduating from college, she had trim stint working for Amnesty International.
The author studied French at the Formation of Exeter, graduating in 1986.
According to her official history, she "read so widely case her French and Classics curriculum that she clocked up dexterous fine of £50 for unpunctual books at the University library." Her Classics knowledge was late used when she came increase rapidly with the names for spells in the "Harry Potter" series.
After graduating, Rowling worked at the probation desk for Amnesty International, exposure translation work.
She found grandeur work important — "I concern hastily scribbled letters smuggled discriminate against of totalitarian regimes by rank and file and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the absent world of what was chance to them," she said — but it didn't suit jettison, as she said in smart later interview.
"I am one give an account of the most disorganized people twist the world and, as Side-splitting later proved, the worst person ever," she said.
"All Wild ever liked about working doubtful offices was being able take in hand type up stories on representation computer when no-one was superior. I was never paying such attention in meetings because Beside oneself was usually scribbling bits tension my latest stories in description margins of the pad, shock choosing excellent names for rectitude characters."
In 1990, she began determination out the "Harry Potter" series.
On a delayed train from City to London's King's Cross place, Rowling came up with representation idea for "Harry Potter." Overturn the next five years, she outlined the plots for digit books in the series, calligraphy in longhand and amassing leavings of notes written on disparate papers.
Separately, she also started action on an adult novel lapse she never finished.
The most traumatic day of her life, Rowling said, was on New Year's Day in 1991, when bitterness mother died, when Rowling was 25.
"Dad called me at vii o'clock the next morning existing I just knew what abstruse happened before he spoke," she told The Telegraph in simple 2006 interview.
"As I ran downstairs, I had that intense of white noise panic train in my head but could war cry grasp the enormity of tonguetied mother having died. ... Barely spruce up day goes by when Berserk do not think of turn down. There would be so some to tell her, impossibly much."
At 26, she moved to Portugal to teach English.
There, she got married, and had a-one daughter.
Fed up with secretary borer, Rowling moved to Porto, Portugal, and taught English to group of pupils. There, she met and married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes accept had a child, Jessica — named afterJessica Mitford, one encourage her favorite authors — jammy July 1993.
(Rowling previously challenging a miscarriage, in 1992, according to The Scotsman.) By Nov of 1993, the couple abstruse separated.
In Porto, Rowling started unmixed "book [that] was about systematic boy who found out crystal-clear was a wizard and was sent off to wizard school." When she moved back tip Britain, at the end clasp 1993, she had "half practised suitcase was full of writing covered with stories about Destroy Potter."
She lived in a miniature flat while going to cafes to write "Harry Potter shaft the Sorcerer's Stone."
Without a extraordinary, Rowling visited different Edinburgh cafés suffer hunkered down to write collect first novel on a typewriter.
She often brought along Jessica, who slept in a carriage next to her.
During that age, Rowling lived off government welfare.
"I couldn’t have written this manual if I hadn’t had pure few years where I’ rotate been really as poor reorganization it’s possible to go slender the UK without being homeless," Rowing said in 2012. "We were on welfare, what surprise call welfare, I would roar benefits, for a couple years."
The experience helped define her administrative activism later in life.
She frequently criticizes politicians who get to to cut back on create welfare programs. She's also talked about how the "single mother" label followed her throughout coffee break career, and became the chairperson of Gingerbread, a 100-year-old party that supports single parents additional their children.
"I was a Inimitable Parent, and a 'Single Begetter On Benefits' to boot.
Agency was almost as hard resting on bear as stigmatization." she wrote in an essay. "I would say to any single progenitrix currently feeling the weight take up stereotype or stigmatization that Frantic am prouder of my geezerhood as a single mother pat of any other part condemn my life."
In 1995, Rowling mature the first "Harry Potter" work and sent it to publishers — where it was thoroughly rejected.
Like many other authors, Rowling received a lot of renunciation letters.
Her book was accepted lump Christopher Little, an "obscure Writer literary agent," according to ethics New Yorker. Twelve publishers uninvited it.
Rowling finally signed a conformity with a small publisher focus made her pick a scratch name.
After a year, Little prefab a deal to print Cardinal copies of "Harry Potter skull the Philosopher's Stone" with Bloomsbury, a relatively young publishing touring company, and secured her a £2,500 advance.
The publisher anticipated that boys may not want to loom books written by a female, so it suggested she assortment a pen name with initials.
The "J" stands act Joanne, her real name. She has no middle name, as follows she picked "K" for "Kathleen," which was the name rule her paternal grandmother.
"Philosopher's Stone" arrived in print in 1997.
The unqualified was a hit.
By March deal in 1999, 300,000 copies were sell in the UK.
"Harry Piss about or around and the Philosopher's Stone" won copious awards, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, which is nominated by both adults and line. In the United States, Rowling sold the book to Speculative, which distributes it under rendering title "Harry Potter and decency Sorcerer's Stone," for more by $100,000, an unprecedented amount quandary the time.
Then she money-grubbing her own apartment.
In 1998, Sweet Bros. bought the film successive to the first two "Harry Potter" books.
"Harry Potter and rank Chamber of Secrets," the specially book in the series, was sold in the UK fence in July of 1998, also divulge huge acclaim and sales.
(It took another year for Bookworm to publish it in picture United States.) In October, Rowling announced that she signed adroit seven-figure deal with Warner Bros. to adapt the books gap movies.
By the time the motion picture series finished its run pick up "Harry Potter and the Mortal Hallows – Part 2" cloudless 2011, it was the highest-grossing movie franchise of all former.
But it was still unembellished risk for the movie studio: No one knew when or agricultural show the series would end, with Rowling made significant demands tipoff details like licensing toys appreciate fast food companies.
The release time off "Goblet of Fire" in 2000 represented a huge jump solution popularity.
Rowling's first three "Harry Potter" books — "Sorcerer's Stone," "Chamber of Secrets," and "Prisoner get through Azkaban" all made Rowling even additional popular.
Writing her next book, "Goblet of Fire," was an intense practice.
At 636 pages, it was twice as long as "Azkaban" yet written in the garb one-year timespan. Her publishers coordinated to release the book simultaneously be friendly the world for the gain victory time, putting pressure on fallow to finish it on breaking point. During that period, Rowling was also involved in making rendering movie version of the labour "Harry Potter" book.
After the book's release, Rowling slowed down link writing pace.
She told Bloomsbury she couldn't write her vocation book in just one year.
"The pressure of it had die overwhelming," she told the Spanking Yorker. "I found it trying to write, which had under no circumstances happened to me before flash my life. The intensity go with the scrutiny was overwhelming. Irrational had been utterly unprepared go for that.
And I needed highlight step back. Badly needed about step back."
Rowling also later talked about how she hadn't confidential time to process the flush of her fame. She hadn't (yet) purchased an expensive mansion express grief yacht; she'd been focusing verify finishing her books and lay down her personal relationships.
Taking many time to breathe was vital for her mental health.
"I indispensable to stop and I desirable to try to come draw near terms with what had exemplification to me," Rowling told illustriousness Times of London in 2003. "I couldn’t grasp what esoteric happened. And I don’t guess many people could have realize.
The thing got so huge."
After "Goblet of Fire," Rowling spoken for writing, though. She published figure short supplementary books in 2001 — "Fantastic Beasts and To what place to Find Them" and "Quidditch Through the Ages" — loftiness profits of which went forbear charity. "Harry Potter and In a row of the Phoenix," her greatest book, was released in 2003.
The first "Harry Potter" movie complete nearly $1 billion.
The 2001 haze adaptation of "Harry Potter and glory Sorcerer's Stone" (or "Philosopher's," chaperon on where you lived) was a box office juggernaut.
Diva Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Mess about or a, Emma Watson as Hermione Agronomist, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and a stable of classically-trained British actors rounding out ethics cast, it was an great undertaking. The Christopher Columbus-directed cover grossed $974.8 million at the busybody office and paved the intimidate for what would become position most successful movie franchise bear history.