Rather like her own creation, the bespectacled and unassuming Harry Potter, JK Rowling leapt from suburban drudgery to superstardom virtually overnight.
Young Rowling, who was later to pen the awesomely successful children’s books about a boy who becomes a heroic wizard, attended her local comprehensive in Tutshill and was shy, unsporty and (naturally) bookish. She studied French at Exeter University with the aim of becoming a bilingual secretary, but her self-confessed scattiness and a tendency to scribble story notes rather than shorthand soon thwarted that career.
Rowling moved to Portugal to become an English teacher aged twenty-six. She married there and gave birth to her daughter Jessica in 1993. The first in the Harry Potter series was embarked upon at about the time her marriage turned sour, at which point she moved to Edinburgh, Jessica and manuscript in tow, to be near her sister.
These were hard times for Rowling. Coping with no fixed income, her failed marriage and the recent death of her mother, she wrote her book in local cafes, determined to finish it. After numerous rejections from publishers, Rowling resigned herself to a return to teaching, but in 1997 she made the breakthrough: Bloomsbury made the best decision it will ever make and published Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone.
After the phenomenal success of her debut, more Harry Potter installments followed, including The Chamber of Secrets, The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Goblet of Fire, the Order of the Phoenix and most recently, Half Blood Prince, the biggest selling book in the US in 2005. In the same year, the woman who has so far sold a staggering 300 million copies worldwide was the ninth biggest celebrity earner in the world and the highest-ranked non-American. Banking £41m, her coffers were swelled by the release of one of three Harry Potter films so far.
Despite numerous accolades, fame has not gone to her head. She lives a luxurious life, of course, but given her wealth, her lifestyle is comparatively modest. She gives generously to charity, in one instance donating £22m to Comic Relief.
Still writing by hand, Rowling has promised one more installment, though with a fortune of £600m in the bank she probably won’t be found scribbling in her local greasy spoon this time!
