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| Birth Name(s) : J.K. Rowling |
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Full J.K. Rowling Biography
Joanne "Jo" Murray, née Rowling OBE (born 31 July 1965), who writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling, is an English writer and author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold over 335 million books. The last four books have been consecutively the fastest-selling books in history, a record which the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, currently holds. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated into 65 languages.
Rowling has parlayed Harry Potter into a global brand worth an estimated $15 billion. She has also gained recognition for sparking an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning the book for the computer and the television. She has become a notable philanthropist, supporting such charities as Comic Relief, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and One Parent Families.
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. With a year of study in Paris, Rowling moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.
The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the US on July 8, 2000, and broke sales records in both countries. Some 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equalling the number Prisoner of Azkaban sold during its first year. In the US, the book sold 3 million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all literary sales records. Rowling admitted that she had had a moment of crisis while writing the novel; "Halfway through writing Four, I realised there was a serious fault with the plot ... I've had some of my blackest moments with this book ... One chapter I rewrote 13 times, though no-one who has read it can spot which one or know the pain it caused me."
In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels for a seven-figure sum. A film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 16 November 2001 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on 15 November 2002. Both were directed by Chris Columbus. The 4 June 2004 film of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by yet another new director, Mike Newell. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released on 11 July 2007. David Yates was the director, and Michael Goldenberg its screenwriter, having taken over the position from Steven Kloves. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is in pre-production, scheduled for release on 21 November 2008. David Yates will direct again, and Kloves will return to screenwrite it. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is expected to be released sometime in 2010.
Some have speculated that Rowling's fraught relationship with the press was the inspiration behind the character Rita Skeeter. However, Rowling noted in 2000 that the character actually predates her rise to fame: "Well I'll tell you the truth but I doubt very much that anyone's going to want to hear this. I tried to put Rita in Philosopher's Stone -- you know when Harry walks into the Leaky Cauldron for the first time and everyone says, "Mr Potter you're back!", I wanted to put a journalist in there. She wasn't called Rita then but she was a woman. And then I thought, as I looked at the plot overall, I thought, that's not really where she fits best, she fits best in Four when Harry's supposed to come to terms with his fame."
Harry Potter has sparked a number of legal disputes since its release. While the majority have not concerned Rowling directly, one, in 1999, in which American author Nancy Stouffer alleged copyright and trademark infringement, affected her personally.
Stouffer claimed that Rowling had stolen the idea for Harry Potter from her 1984 works The Legend of Rah and the Muggles and Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly. Rowling, along with Scholastic Press (her American publisher) and Warner Bros. (holders of the series' film rights), pre-empted Stouffer with a suit of their own seeking a declaratory judgment that they had not infringed on any of Stouffer's works. During the course of the trial, it was proven "by clear and convincing evidence, that Stouffer has perpetrated a fraud on the Court through her submission of fraudulent documents as well as through her untruthful testimony," including changing pages years after the fact to retroactively insert the word "muggle". Stouffer's case was dismissed with prejudice and she was fined $50,000 for her "pattern of intentional bad faith conduct" in relation to her employment of fraudulent submissions, and ordered to pay a portion of the plaintiffs' legal fees. |
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