JK Rowling - Updated Apr 2024

JK Rowling is a British author and screenwriter famous for her seven-book Harry Potter children’s book series. JK Rowling is the author of the ‘Harry Potter fantasy series, one of the most popular books and film franchises in history.

Early Life and Childhood

JK Rowling is 56 years old. She was born on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire. She is the daughter of science technician Anne and Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer Peter James Rowling. Likewise, her parents first met each other for the first time on a train departing from King’s Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. Her father and mother married on 14 March 1965.

One of her maternal great-grandfathers, Dugald Campbell, was a Scottish man from Lamlash. Similarly, her mother’s French paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the War Cross for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during World War I. She originally believed her great-grandfather Volant had won the Legion of Honour during the war, as she said when she got it herself in 2009. Later, she found the truth when featured in an episode of the UK genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? in which she got out it was a many Louis Volant who won the Legion of Honour.

When she learned about her grandfather’s story of bravery and found that the War Cross was for “ordinary” soldiers like her grandfather, who had been a waiter, she affirmed the War Cross was “better” to her than the Legion of Honour.

JK Rowling – Childhood

She has a sister named Dianne born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. Her family moved to the nearby village of Winterbourne when she was just four years old. As a child, she often wrote fantasy stories which she often read to her sister. At the age of nine, she moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. Her great-aunt supplied her with a copy of Jessica Mitford’s autobiography, Hons and Rebels when she was a young teenager.

Caption: JK Rowling on her photo from the age of one year old to date (Source: YouTube )

Rowling’s teenage days were spent quite unhappily. Her mother was having diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and a difficult relationship with her father, with whom she is not on speaking terms. She later even stated herself as the character of Hermione Granger when she was eleven. She had a best friend Sean Harris in the Upper Sixth and owned a turquoise Ford Anglia which she inspired a flying version that arrived in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Like other teenagers, she was also equally interested in rock music, listening to the Clash, the Smiths, and Siouxsie Sioux, mimicking the look of the latter with back-combed hair and black eyeliner, a look that she would still sport when starting university.

Education

Moving toward Rowling’s educational background, she attended St Michael’s Primary School as a child. She states that the biggest inspiration to the headmaster at St Michael’s, Alfred Dunn for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Similarly, she went to secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother worked in the science department. Her first secondary school English teacher Steve Eddy, remembers her as “not exceptional” but “one of the bright girls among the group, and quite good at English”. She took A-levels in English, French, and German, obtaining two As and a B, and was even the head girl.

In 1982, she took the entrance exams for Oxford University but could not pass. Rowling earned a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter. A French professor, Martin Sorrell at Exeter, remembers her as “a quietly competent student, with a denim jacket and dark hair, who, in academic terms, gave the appearance of doing what was necessary”.

She recalls doing little work, favoring to read Dickens and Tolkien. After a year of study in Paris, she graduated from Exeter in 1986. In 1988, she wrote a short essay about her time studying Classics titled “What was the Name of that Nymph Again? or Greek and Roman Studies Recalled.” The essay was published in the University of Exeter’s journal Pegasus.

Corona Virus; JK Rowling contributes £1m to two charities

In this worldwide pandemic, JK Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter Adventures contribute £1m to charities supporting helpless people during the lockdown. Half of the money is to help homeless people, and half to refugees to support victims of domestic abuse. Her donations come between HarryPotterDay on Twitter.

On Twitter, she said: “Today’s the 22nd anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, but I am going, to be honest, and say that it feels inappropriate to talk about fictional deaths. “Too many people are losing loved ones in the real world.” She wrote many of her Harry Potter stories while living in Edinburgh.

She added Several weak people who were homeless or in an abusive relationship were undergoing at this time. Further, she approved Harry Potter hospital rooms. Doctors going through with coronavirus were “uplifted” to have a message of help from JK Rowling. They marked areas of their hospital after Harry Potter schoolhouses.

Similarly, the meeting rooms at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital are named Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw. The hospital stated the plan was “a bit of fun amongst all the significant issues”. The author tweeted to state she had “rarely felt prouder”. The hospital medical team chose to name conference rooms after the Hogwarts houses when redesigning methods to be better provided for the coronavirus outbreak.

Inspiration and Mother’s Death

Rowling moved with her then-boyfriend to Manchester after working as a researcher and bilingual secretary in London for Amnesty International. She worked there at the Chamber of Commerce. In 1990, she got the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry “came fully formed” into her mind while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London.

When she reached her Clapham Junction flat, she started writing immediately. In December, her mother, Anne, died after ten years of suffering from many sclerosis. She was writing Harry Potter at the time and had never told her mother about it. Her mother’s death profoundly influenced her writing and directed her feelings of loss by scribbling about Harry’s feelings of loss in greater detail in the first book.

Professional Life

Harry Potter

Talking about Rowling’s professional life, she was working as a secretary and researcher for Amnesty International in 1990. When she imagined the idea for her first novel, about a boy who finds out he is a wizard and attends wizardry school, during a delayed train trip from Manchester to London. As soon as she went back to her flat in Clapham Junction, she started to write it.

She finished her first novel in 1995, titled “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (retitled “Sorcerer’s Stone” in the United States). She nabbed a literary agent and presented to twelve publishing houses. Initially, she met with a resounding rejection from each one. After a year, Bloomsbury Publishing gave her the green light and a £1,500 in advance. The chairman presented his 8-year-old daughter with the first chapter of the book to review. Her acknowledgment quickly demands the rest.  Therefore, the chairman cements the decision to go forward with the book. Then she was soon given a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to write the second book.

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With an initial print run of just 1,000 copies, and some of it went straight to libraries. “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was issued in June 1997. The sleeper novel ultimately started to win awards, and gain recognition. In 1998, Scholastic Inc. gained the rights for a sale to publish the novel. Was published the book in 1998 in the U.S. under the revised title of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

This first installment of the series turned out to be the first in a final series of seven books and the beginning of a major literary, film, and licensing industry. As the “Harry Potter” books earned fame around the world, they broke literary sales records. The last two, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, traded nine and eleven million copies, individually, within twenty-four hours of their publicity. Further, the books have now been interpreted into 65 languages around the world.

Films

Following the huge success of the novels, JK Rowling came with a series of popular films.   films kicked off in 1998 when Warner Brothers spent seven figures for the rights to the first two books.  Her film adaptation of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was released in November 2001. Further, she released the second adaptation the following November.

In the years 2004 and 2005, she subsequently released “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” The second two film adaptations were released in July 2007 and July 2009. She released her final part of the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in two segments in November 2010 and the final segment in July 2011.

Her main demand for the films was that they all be shot in Britain with an all-British cast. In 2013, Warner Bros started a planned series of five films. They scripted and co-produced by her about the character Newt Scamander, author of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”. She first released her movie “Fantastic Beasts” movie in 2016, set 70 years before the events of the “Harry Potter” series. Moreover, she released her second movie in November 2018.

Caption: JK Rowling on the screening of Harry Potter with star cast (Source: Biography)

Philanthropy

JK Rowling has used her wealth and power to support a wide number of philanthropic causes and charities. She founded the Volant Charitable Trust in 2001, which uses its noteworthy budget to help fight childhood poverty. She involved herself in many other poverty and social inequality charities, along with charities that work to support fighting against multiple sclerosis. Notably, she commanded that Coca-Cola, who gained the product tie-in race for the film series, donate USD 18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental and different community programs.

Similarly, she is the founder of the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic at the University of Edinburgh. She named the hospital after her mother who suffered from various sclerosis. She financed the clinic with an initial $16 million donation. To date, she has individually donated at least $150 million to charity.

JK Rowling – Net Worth 2024

Speaking on JK Rowling’s earnings, she is a British author and movie producer who has a decent sum of money through her profession. Therefore, JK Rowling’s estimated net worth is around $1 billion. Likewise, she is one of the wealthiest private citizens in the United Kingdom and the first author in the world to become a billionaire.

As she earned fame and fortune for writing the “Harry Potter” fantasy series which has sold 500 million copies since debuting in 1997. The books issued a multi-billion dollar film, merchandise, and theme park empire. In a given year, she earns an average of $50 – $100 million from her different efforts. Between June 2018 and June 2019, she gained $90 million. She wrote the first book as a working single mother living on benefits.

Currently, the authors live in Church Cottage in Tutshill, Gloucestershire purchased it way back in 2011 when it went back on the market. She paid approximately £400k for the house, according to the BBC, with Land Registry records proving that Edinburgh-based Caernarfon Lettings Ltd got the house.

previous marriage. They live in Edinburgh, London, and Aberfeldy, Scotland.

Marriage, divorce, and single parenthood

Reflecting Rowling’s personal life, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in 1992. JK Rowling also had a child named Jessica on July 27, 1993, in Portugal. The duo separated on November 17, 1993.

In December 1993, she along with her then-infant daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near her sister with three chapters of what would become Harry Potter in her suitcase. She and her daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland. JK was a self-described broke, struggling single mother on welfare the entire time she worked on the first “Harry Potter” installment. During this period, she struggled with lots of depression and contemplated suicide.

On 26 December 2001, she remarried Neil Murray. He is a Scottish doctor, in a private ceremony at her home, Killiechassie House in Scotland. She has a son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, born on 24 March 2003. Shortly after she started writing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Later, she stopped working on the novel to care for David in his early infancy.

Caption: JK with her husband attending an event (Source: Quora)

JK Rowling – Body Measurements

JK has a good height stands at a height of 5 feet and 5 inches (1.65 meters) and weighs around 57 kg (126 lbs). She has a pair of green eyes with blonde hair color.

JK Rowling – Social Media

JK is active on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. But she does not have an Instagram account. Likewise, she has more than 14.6 million followers on her Twitter account and over 5.5 million followers on her Facebook account.