As primary school came to and end Rowling moved on to attend secondary school at Wyedean Comprehensive School. Though Rowling excelled in her humanities courses, her math was not up to par and she was no athlete. Rowling even broke her arm trying to play the harmless sport of netball (a sport equivalent to American basketball). Though creative with words, she was not as creative when it came to crafts; she failed miserably trying to make the various items assigned to them in her metal and woodshop classes. Regardless of these issues, Rowling still had what she loved most, her ability to write. Besides her sister, and her usual group of friends, Rowling had one friend who stood out from the rest, Sean Harris. In fact, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was dedicated to Harris, a clear indicator of a strong friendship. Sean was Rowling’s childhood friend and one of the few people who Rowling told of her secret ambition to become a writer. Harry Potter’s best friend, Ron Weasley, closely resembles Sean Harris, though Rowling does state that “Ron Weasley isn’t a living portrait of Sean, but he is very Sean-ish.” One of Sean Harris’s most important contributions to Rowling was his car, a blue Ford Anglia. Because Rowling lived on the countryside, life did get dreary for her and her friends. Sean, having a car, helped Rowling escape the monotonous evenings otherwise spent at her house. This car comes into play in the second novel of the series as well. Harry is saved from the confines of his aunt and uncle’s house by Ron Weasley and his twin brothers. The three brothers piloted a blue Ford Anglia that whisked Harry away from his dull summer. Sean Harris played a supportive role in Rowling’s life, just as Ron Weasley did in Harry’s.
Once Rowling was in the Upper Sixth or high school, and came in contact with more friends, she began to relax her uptight nature. Rowling began to speak freely and “began asserting herself in class”. Miss Shepard, Rowling’s favorite English teacher, played an important role in this point of her life. She helped Rowling free herself from her self- imposed constraints. Rowling remained in contact with her even after graduation. In her final year of secondary school, Rowling excelled and became Head Girl, and soon graduated with honors in 1983. Rowling knew what path she wished to take, writing, but could never muster the nerve to tell her parents, who told Rowling to take French and classic’s courses at the University of Exeter. Rowling glumly agreed and soon found that school wasn’t too bad on her own.
Rowling soon found her first boyfriend and continued to write as a hobby. “She found her classics courses particularly helpful in this pursuit, and she began filling notebooks with names derived from mythology and classic literature.” Even as a college student Rowling was continually envisioning various story plots and was copying names down for future reference. Perhaps, this hobby was what kept Rowling from her studies. She did not pass with honors as she did in her high school; she merely passed with an average (2.2) degree. This did not seem to discourage Rowling, for she wished to be a writer and cared not for the mundane office life; nevertheless, she needed to eat, and so she took a bilingual secretary course to increase the likelihood of getting a job. Though Rowling resented ever being a secretary, she admits that “the course did have one valuable aspect – Rowling learned to type. This skill would come in handy later, as she had to type several copies of the first Harry Potter book for submission.”. Although Rowling did not see it coming, she would have no access to a copy machine to make replicas of her first novel, and so her typing lessons aided her greatly. Rowling did land a job as a secretary after she had completed her courses and was soon living in a flat with a friend. This job did not last long, Rowling found the occupation irrelevant to the real career path she wished to take. She found a more significant profession, researching human rights abuses of the French-speaking portions of Africa at Amnesty International.
A few years later her boyfriend asked her if she would like to move to Manchester with him and she agreed. After finding an apartment in Manchester, the two returned to London via train and it was here Harry Potter was created. The train delayed, leaving Rowling on the train for four hours, four hours she spent purely thinking; and as she thought the idea of Harry Potter slipped into her mind. She pictured Harry just as he is in the books today, clearly with his black hair, emerald eyes, and glasses. She was crestfallen when she discovered she had no pen, and so she continued to ponder and create the Wizarding world we all know today. She concentrated on Hogwarts on the train and upon arriving at her home she instantly began taking notes on her newly formed world. She decided to set Hogwarts in Scotland, she considered it a “subconscious tribute to where [her] parents had married.”. As time went by she continued to write and as the couple settled in Manchester she took up another sordid occupation, she worked at the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. However her indifferent attitude towards the job led to an early eviction and she moved on to be a secretary at the University of Manchester. Just as Rowling took up her pen again to continue the tale of Harry Potter, her mother died. Her mother, Anne Rowling, died young at the age of 45; she had given in to multiple sclerosis and left Rowling with a feeling of great remorse. Rowling knew of her mother’s worsening condition but never gave much thought to it, and was stricken when she heard the news. Her grief in never being able to share her dreams of writing with her mother soon came out in her first novel: “when Harry looks in the mirror and sees his family waving to him. That was a very important image from my life, when I lost my mother.” J.K. represents her feeling of pain and anguish, her repentance through Harry looking into the Mirror of Erised and seeing his lost family, his parents. Nonetheless, death is a major theme in Rowling’s novels, Voldemort searching for ways to cheat death, Harry’s mother dying to save his life, and Harry himself facing death in almost every book.
It was during these months of lament that Rowling created many of her series most important themes and topics. The depression and feelings of loneliness that Rowling herself went through during this point in her life was expressed in the creation of Dementors (happiness-leaching monsters that guard the wizard prison Azkaban). She also got into a fight with her boyfriend during this point in time and stormed off to a nearby pub. As she brooded, the wizarding sport, Quidditch, popped into her mind and she spent the rest of the evening creating the immensely admired game. Rowling’s stories have a light humor that everyone finds funny, however as she wrote her first book, as well as the rest of the series “The humor that pervaded the novel is based on what Joanne found funny, not what she thought would amuse children or other adults.”. Rowling’s relationship with her boyfriend steadily thinned until the two finally went their separate ways.
Rowling moved to Oporto, Portugal in 1991 and taught became an English teacher. On the flight to her paradise she thought up the four different houses at Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw, and had to resort to writing the names on an airsickness bag. Rowling enjoyed the move and her new profession, and continued to write. She also met another man, Jorge Arantes, who she soon married and later had a daughter (Jessica) with. As she wrote her first book she realized that it would immediately be recognized as a children’s book, and she feared she would not write in a way the youth would relate with. “Luckily she discovered that even though she has never tried her hand at children’s stories or nooks before, she could easily ‘think herself back to 11 years old.’.” Rowling had no experience as a children’s author but her vast imaginative mind allowed her to recollect her childhood and writing became fairly easy.
Rowling’s marriage did not last, and she was soon divorced. Now a single mother, Rowling was having a tough time keeping her job, handling a baby, and writing all at the same time. Luckily, her sister, Di, aided her and she moved back up to Europe to Edinburgh during the 1993 Christmas holidays. Joanne had a serious decision to make now that she was once again settled down in a two-room apartment. She wanted to continue Harry Potter, but she needed money to support her child. To her dismay Rowling ended up living entirely on public assistance (welfare). Rowling abhorred the idea of being forced to live on charity. As Rowling visited her friend who had just had a baby, she couldn’t help but cry as she noticed that her friend’s child had a large room full of toys, while her daughter’s playthings were snugly fit within a single shoebox. Writing Sorcerer’s Stone was tough with a baby, and whenever Rowling could get Jessica to sleep, she would rush to a nearby café, and hurriedly write a few chapters, often rewriting the same chapters until she decided she had to move on. The café employees and manager did not take kindly to Rowling’s intrusion in their coffee shop, for she would buy a single cup of tea as she longhand wrote her novel for hours. Luckily, with the opening her brother-in-law’s café, Rowling was able to write in peace and in 1995, finished the first copy of her novel.
After the completion of her manuscript she began to type it on an inexpensive manual typewriter. She struggled to finish typing and even wrote her novel in the computer labs at the college where she was taking her teaching classes. In the end, she worriedly noted that her novel was twice the length of a regular children’s novel. She set off to find a job now that she once again had free-time on her hands, and soon began teaching French. She sent two copies of her manuscript to various researched publishers but was rejected by all of them. She tried again, this time sending her manuscript to an agent by the name of Christopher Little. However, her copy instead reached Bryony Evans, the office manager. After reviewing the first three chapters, the company agreed to represent Rowling. Right away they sent copies of the book to twelve various publishing houses, all of which rejected it. They continued to try and find a publisher and a year later success was at hand. Rowling received a letter of acceptance from editor Barry Cunningham from the small publisher Bloomsbury. The decision to take Rowling on was due to the eight year old daughter of the company’s chairman who insisted on reading the rest of the book after receiving the first chapter. Rowling was immensely satisfied at finally getting published and did not care that writing children’s books would not be a very profitable career. After the publication Rowling received an “£8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing”. In June 1997, Bloomsbury published merely five thousand copies of Philosopher’s Stone, and most of them were sent to libraries, however, those first copies are now prized greatly by collectors around the world, and are valued over fifteen thousand dollars.
In America, the rights to publish the novel were being auctioned and Scholastic Inc. came out the winner, buying the right to the novel for over one hundred thousand dollars. News which blew Rowling’s mind. In October of 1998 Scholastic published Rowling’s novel under the new title; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Soon news of Rowling’s fantasy novel spread throughout the world and with it Rowling’s fame.
Rowling won numerous prizes and honorary awards from her series including: Nestlé Smarties Book Prize; British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year; Children’s Book Award. In December of 1999, Rowling having finished the second book, published the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and once more won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to ever be awarded the Smarties Prize three times in a row. Her fame reached such a height that she felt it would only be right to withdraw her fourth novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from the running to give other authors a chance. Rowling’s awards did not end there however, in January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the first Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year award ever given out. Rowling did lose the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. That same year, in June, the Queen of England honored Rowling by dawning her as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Rowling’s novels have broken sales records, even being noted as the fastest selling books in history. The speed and amount of money at which Rowling’s books sold is greater than that of any blockbuster film. A Guinness World Records Award was given to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for being the fastest selling book ever.
Despite her great wealth Rowling constantly cares for those in desperate need for aid and help. She has contributed greatly to society through various charitable causes. A popular charity being Comic Relief in which she wrote two catalogues relating to the Wizarding world in her novels: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, both of these books were mentioned in the Harry Potter series and so she even went as far as to write under the names of Newt Scamander and Kennilworthy Whisp each being the “author” of one of the catalogues. The books grossed over fifty million dollars and she even contributed a separate twenty-two million to the organization as well.
J.K. Rowling is currently married to Neil Murray, an anesthetist, and lives in an estate in Perth and Kinross, Scotland with their three children: their daughter Jessica, their son David and Rowling's youngest child, Mackenzie.
Rowling has lived in many different places, suffered tragedy and experienced success. As we look closer at her works we see how her life has been exemplified by her works. Rowling draws her readers through ha fascinating storyline, through the world she created. True, the Harry Potter series may not be noted as a great “lyrical” work, such as Tolkein’s fantasy, Lord of the Rings; however, what Rowling lacks in her style she indisputably makes up with her content. The twists near the end of every chapter, ever book, keep the reader on an edge. The witty humor is cleverly placed to break the gloom and darker moments of the series. Rowling is unquestionably a master storyteller, and though some may compare her works to others and decide them to be a poor display of literature; must an author create a flawless epic to be noted as a worthy read?
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