J.K. Rowling (Author of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

more photos (8)

J.K. Rowling鈥檚 Followers (231,506)

Add New
Videos

8 comments

'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' Full Trailer

5 comments

J.K. Rowling

Born

in Yate, South Gloucestershire, England, The United Kingdom

July 31, 1965

Website

Twitter

Genre

Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy

Influences

Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis ...more

edit data

See also: Robert Galbraith
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she See also: Robert Galbraith
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (n茅e Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.

Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.

Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn鈥檛 particularly happy. I think it鈥檚 a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books. ...more

96 posts
J.K. Rowling's Blog

J.K. Rowling isn't a 欧宝娱乐 Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.

HBO announces writer and director for Harry Potter TV series

听

HBO, in association with Warner Bros. Television, has named Francesca Gardiner (HBO鈥檚鈥淪uccession,鈥� 鈥淜illing Eve鈥�)听as writer (showrunner) and executive producer and Mark Mylod (HBO鈥檚鈥淪uccession,鈥� 鈥淕ame of Thrones鈥澨齛nd 鈥淭he Last of Us鈥�) as executive producer and director of multiple episodes of the upcoming original Harry Potter series.

The series will be a faithful adaptation of J.K. Rowling鈥檚 H

Combine Editions
J.K. Rowling鈥檚 books

Average rating: 4.46 · 39,743,582 ratings · 934,154 reviews · 555 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	Harry Potter and the Philosopher鈥檚 Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling, Olly Moss (Illustrator) 4.47 avg rating — 10,992,666 ratings — published 1997 — 1360 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3) 4.58 avg rating — 4,643,473 ratings — published 1999 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) 4.43 avg rating — 4,320,181 ratings — published 1998 — 1062 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPr茅 (Illustrator) 4.57 avg rating — 4,043,805 ratings — published 2000 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPr茅 (Illustrator) 4.62 avg rating — 3,989,076 ratings — published 2007 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPr茅 (Illustrator) 4.50 avg rating — 3,668,799 ratings — published 2003 — 716 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPr茅 (Illustrator) 4.58 avg rating — 3,543,323 ratings — published 2005 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two (Harry Potter, #8) by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany (Adaptation) 3.48 avg rating — 1,104,934 ratings — published 2016 — 208 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tales of Beedle the Bard (Hogwarts Library, #3) 4.03 avg rating — 506,170 ratings — published 2008 — 273 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry Potter Series Box Set (Harry Potter, #1-7) 4.73 avg rating — 298,805 ratings — published 2007 — 243 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by J.K. Rowling…

Series by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter (7 books)
by

J.K. Rowling,

Mary GrandPr茅 (Illustrator)

4.49 avg rating — 36,913,584 ratings

Harry Potter Korean Split-Volume Paperback (23 books)
by

J.K. Rowling

4.62 avg rating — 4,026,438 ratings

Fantastic Beasts: The Original Screenplay (3 books)
by

J.K. Rowling,

Steve Kloves

4.12 avg rating — 221,912 ratings

Pottermore Presents (3 books)
by

J.K. Rowling

4.19 avg rating — 119,345 ratings

From the Wizarding Archive (2 books)
by

J.K. Rowling

4.07 avg rating — 5,696 ratings

More series by J.K. Rowling鈥�

Related News

Kristin Hannah Writes an American Epic

When Kristin Hannah, the bestselling author of The Nightingale, began her new historical epic centered on the Dust Bowl and the Great...

Polls

Harry Potter Or Twilight

Harry PotterJ.K. Rowling

1369 votes, 91.8%

TwilightStephenie Meyer

123 votes, 8.2%

1492 total votes

48 comments

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Mystery/thriller about an exclusive British Boys' School [s]	3	1247	Jun 13, 2007 03:12PM
The Book Challenge: Sarah's 2008 Book Challenge v2.0 - Fini!	5	1845	Dec 29, 2008 09:31AM
The Book Challenge: Elaine's Oct - Dec 2008 Book Challenge	13	213	Jan 01, 2009 09:33AM
75 Books...More o...: Authors you love	17	2285	Jan 27, 2009 04:14AM
Glens Falls (NY) ...: Jim's post about a Stephen King Interview...	4	109	Feb 10, 2009 11:19AM
Glens Falls (NY) ...: Mon. Feb. 9, 2009 - What are U doing today?	31	26	Feb 15, 2009 10:12PM

More…

Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite J.K. to 欧宝娱乐.

欧宝娱乐

J.K. Rowling鈥檚 Followers (231,506)

Add NewVideos

J.K. Rowling

96 postsJ.K. Rowling's Blog

HBO announces writer and director for Harry Potter TV series

Combine EditionsJ.K. Rowling鈥檚 books

Series by J.K. Rowling

Related News

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

Add New
Videos

96 posts
J.K. Rowling's Blog

Combine Editions
J.K. Rowling鈥檚 books