Back to Index JK Rowling
Joanne Rowling was born in South Gloucestershire, England in 1965. There is some confusion as to exactly where; Rowling has said she was born in Chipping Sodbury, whereas her birth certificate apparently claims she was born in the Cottage Hospital at Yate. These two towns are, however, almost contiguous. Together with her mother, father, and younger sister, Dianne (”Di”), she moved to Winterbourne, Bristol and then to Tutshill near Chepstow. She attended secondary school at Wyedean Comprehensive, where she told stories to her fellow students. In 1990, her 45-year-old mother succumbed to a decade-long battle with multiple sclerosis.
After studying French and Classics at the University of Exeter, with a year of study in Paris, she moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. During this period she had the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry while she was on a four-hour, delayed train trip between Manchester and London. When she had reached her destination, she already had the characters and a good part of the plot for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in her head; she began working on the story during her lunch hours.
Rowling then moved to Oporto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language. While there, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes on 16 October 1992. They had one child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (born 27 July 1993), before their divorce in 1995. Their daughter was named after Rowling’s heroine, Jessica Mitford.
In December, 1994, she and her daughter moved to be near her sister in Edinburgh. Unemployed and living on state benefits, she completed her first novel, doing some of the work in an Edinburgh cafe — Nicolson’s Cafe on Nicolson Street (now a Chinese restaurant), owned by her brother-in-law (there is a widely circulated rumour that she wrote in a local café in order to escape from her unheated flat, but in a 2001 BBC interview Rowling remarked, “I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat, in Edinburgh, in mid-winter; it had heating”). Rowling spent a year studying for a PGCE in modern languages at Moray House (now part of the University of Edinburgh), graduating in 1996
In 1995, Rowling completed her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. After several rejections, a year later she was finally given the greenlight from the small publisher Bloomsbury. She then received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing. The following spring, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc, who paid Rowling more than $100,000. Rowling has said she “nearly died” when she heard the news.Philosopher’s Stone was published in July, 1997 and was an instant hit. Only four months later, Rowling won her first award; the Nestlé Smarties Prize (a children’s novel award voted by children). In July, 1998, Rowling won the British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year. In September 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher’s Stone in the States under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, a change Rowling now claims she regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time. The book was an even bigger hit in the States then it was in the UK and Rowling subsequently went on a multi-city tour of the US to publicise the novel.
Harry Potter has made Rowling a well known and a very successful author, but after Rowling finishes the final Harry Potter book, she plans to continue writing, possibly using a pen name. In the same informative rare radio interview with a BBC journalist, Rowling stated she will most likely be aiming her new books at a younger audience.
Rowling recently revealed that she has completed a few short stories and another children’s book (a “political fairy story” about a monster, aimed at a younger audience than Harry Potter readers).
Rowling’s full name is Joanne Rowling, not, as is often assumed, “Joanne Kathleen Rowling.” Before publishing her first volume, Bloomsbury feared that the target group of young boys might be reluctant to buy books written by a female author. They requested that Rowling use two initials, rather than reveal her first name. As she had no middle name, she chose K from her grandmother’s name Kathleen, as the second initial of her pseudonym. The name Kathleen has never been part of her legal name.
She calls herself “Jo” and claims, “No one ever called me “Joanne” when I was young, unless they were angry.” Rumors that she likes people to call her “Joanie” are false, according to her website.
Her surname is pronounced like “rolling”
In the late 1990s Nancy Stouffer, an author of children’s books published in the 1980s, began to charge publicly that Rowling’s books were based on her books, including The Legend of Rah and the Muggles and Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly. In 2001 Rowling, Scholastic Press (the American publisher of her books) and Warner Bros. (the producer of the film adaptations) sued Stouffer, asking the court to judge that there was no infringement of Stouffer’s trademarks or copyright. Stouffer, who had not previously sued, then filed counterclaims alleging such infringement.
Rowling and her co-litigants argued that much of the evidence that Stouffer presented was fraudulent, and asked for sanctions and attorneys’ fees as punishment. In September 2002 the court found in Rowling’s favour, stating that Stouffer had lied to the court and falsified and forged documents to support her case. Stouffer was fined US$50,000 and ordered to pay part (but not all) of the plaintiffs’ costs.
In January 2004 it was reported that Stouffer’s appeal against the judgement had been rejected. The appeals court agreed that Stouffer’s claims were properly dismissed because “no reasonable juror could find a likelihood of confusion as to the source of the two parties’ works”. The Court explained:
Stouffer’s and Plaintiffs’ marks are used in two very different ways. Rowling’s use of the term “Muggles” describes ordinary humans with no magical powers while Stouffer’s “Muggles” are tiny, hairless creatures with elongated heads. Further, the Harry Potter books are novel-length works and whose primary customers are older children and adults whereas Stouffer’s booklets appeal to young children. Accordingly, the District Court correctly dismissed Stouffer’s trademark claims.
Stouffer was also ordered to pay the costs of the appeal. A report of the judgement can be found at Entertainment Law Digest.
Information collected from Wikipedia
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