At midnight on July 31, 2016, a new book about the boy who survived, Harry Potter and damn child". It is worth confessing that all of us, with the exception of the most ardent fans, have already forgotten our favorite characters and, in general, did not look forward to holding the new work of Joan K. Rowling in our hands.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was originally conceived by Rowling as a script for a production at London's Palace Theatre. The text was adapted for the stage by playwright Jack Thorne and directed by John Tiffany. The result was a performance in two parts, with a total duration of about five hours. The pre-premiere run with the audience took place back in June 2016, however, thanks to the authority of JK Rowling, who spoke on her Instagram account with a request to keep a secret and not reveal the plot, there were no spoilers (which is very rare). The spectators of the run were limited to general delights from what they saw. As a result, 175 thousand tickets for the performance were sold in a matter of days, and many of those who bought them admitted that they would go to the theater for the first time in their lives. Isn't this real magic? The official premiere of the play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” took place a few hours before the start of sales of the book of the same name, which Rowling announced as the official 8th part of the “Potteriana”, which further incited Harry Potter fans.
The book, like the play, takes place 19 years after the events described in The Deathly Hallows. Harry and his friends grew up, and in the center of the plot is not a boy at all, or rather, a man with a scar, but his son ─ Albus Severus Potter.
JK Rowling was more than satisfied with the production, but noted that this time the story about Harry is really the last one - everything has already been said and there is absolutely no need to turn your favorite fairy tale into a soap opera. Indeed, readers accustomed to old heroes will not accept new ones at all. On the other hand, Rowling promised the same thing after the release of the seventh book of the Potter series.
It is noteworthy that a new story about Harry Potter was released on the birthday of the writer herself and her protagonist. Yes, yes, perhaps few paid attention to this, but Harry Potter was born on the same day as Joan herself - July 31st. There are a few more facts that even the most devoted fans of the Harry Potter saga probably didn't know about.
Joan started writing at age 6
For the first time, Joan thought about a career as a writer at the age of 6. Then she wrote the book "Rabbit" (who was the main character in it, it's not difficult to guess). The first and not too impartial critic was the mother of the future writer. She praised her daughter for her first steps in the literary field, after which, Joan, being confident in her congeniality, was about to immediately go to the publishing house to publish her debut work. Then the girl was dissuaded from this idea. And who knows, maybe we would have heard about it much earlier.
By the way, "Harry Potter" and "Rabbit" are not the only works of the writer. Having finished, as it seemed to her, with the Pottery, Joan decided to try herself in the field of adult literature. In 2012, she published the book Random Vacancy. The BBC made a mini-series based on this work. However, this success seemed meager compared to the enormous popularity of Harry Potter. The situation was slightly corrected by a series of books about detective Cormoran Strike, which was sold in large numbers. Here, however, there is one remark ─ few people directly connect these books with the name of Rowling, because she published them under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith).
Hermione Rowling wrote from herself
In one of her many conversations with journalists, Rowling admitted that many of the characters in the "Potterian" are not accidental. For example, professors Snape and Lockhart are written off from acquaintances of the writer, however, both characters are slightly exaggerated. But Hermione Rowling saved up “for dessert”, because Joan wrote the smartest girl in the Harry Potter story from herself. As a child, the creator of the Potter series was the same diligent student, she strove to gain as much knowledge as possible and did not tolerate any hooligan antics at all. True, according to Rowling, Hermione is much wiser than she herself was at that age.
12 publishers refused to publish the first Harry Potter book
JK Rowling completed her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in 1995. The literary agent, who agreed to represent her after much persuasion, sent the manuscript to 12 publishing houses, but it was rejected everywhere. Only a year later, the manuscript was accepted by the small London publishing house Bloomsbury, although its editor-in-chief, even after the book was approved, was sure that Rowling would not earn much from children's books, and she was advised to find a permanent job.
She was offered to take a male pseudonym
As you know, Rowling had to run around to publishers before Bloomsbury still accepted the first book about Harry Potter (thus, the publishing house provided income for many years to come not only for Rowling, but also for itself). But in one of the "short-sighted" publishers, Joan was offered to take a male pseudonym, or even publish her work anonymously, fearing that the boys would not want to read an adventure novel written by a woman. Oh, how wrong they were! However, Joan, after many years, nevertheless followed the advice.
JK Rowling is the first billionaire writer
To date, the writer is the first dollar billionaire in the world to earn his fortune through writing. This is doubly a record, given that we are talking about children's literature.
Dementors were inspired by Rowling's Dementors
Before becoming rich and famous, JK Rowling was the most ordinary woman, who, moreover, found herself in a very deplorable situation. At the age of 25, Joan divorced her husband after a short and exhausting marriage and was left with a young daughter in her arms. 7 years after graduation, she felt like "the biggest loser." The total lack of money, the lack of a stable job and other life difficulties that lie in wait for every average single mother, even in such a prosperous country as Great Britain, could not but affect the morale of the future star of children's literature. Rowling ended up in a specialized hospital with a diagnosis of "clinical depression". Subsequently, she admitted to reporters that the creation of the Dementors, perhaps the most terrible characters in the Harry Potter saga, inspired her precisely the state of longing and the feeling of absolute hopelessness that she experienced during her illness.
Contributed to a sharp increase in demand for domestic owls
The Harry Potter books and later films dramatically increased the popularity of owls as pets in the UK. However, many of their owners, alas, did not initially realize that these birds were not at all intended for keeping at home, and one of their most unpleasant features is a bad smell that cannot be drowned out by anything. In the end for short term very sad statistics appeared: most domestic owls were simply refused, and the unfortunate birds ended up either in special shelters or even on the street, where they were doomed to death. A similar story, by the way, happened before - after the release of the film "101 Dalmatians", when at first everyone massively started dogs of this breed, and after some time they put them out on the street.
The Magic Platform is located at King's Cross Station for a reason.
Platform 9¾, from which the train to Hogwarts leaves, is not accidentally located at one of the largest London stations. It was there that Rowling's parents met at the time. Therefore, for her since childhood, this place was one of the most magical. By the way, Joan's mother died of multiple sclerosis, just when the writer was just starting to work on the first Harry Potter book. Joan didn't even have time to tell her mother about her affair. But the pain of loss found a creative expression: her character, Harry Potter, deeply experiences the death of her parents in the book, and these are not fictional feelings ─ in them Rowling describes what she personally knows well.
Voldemort's name is mispronounced
It turns out that we all pronounce the name of the main villain of the "Potterian" Lord Voldemort (or, as we are more accustomed to, Voldemort). In one of the interviews, the author of the novel clarified that she “always forgets to mention one little thing” ─ the letter “t” in the name of the Dark Lord is “silent”. That is, it would be correct to call him Voldemort. However, "I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who says his name that way," Rowling added. Voldemort's name comes from French words meaning "escape from death" and his main goal is to defeat death. In the second Harry Potter novel, Rowling shows us that the phrase "I am Lord Voldemort" is an anagram for "Tom Marvolo Riddle", which is his real name.
"Harry Potter" made children take up books
The penultimate Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released on July 21, 2007, selling 11 million copies on the first day. Thus, Rowling's previous record for the fastest-selling book of all time was broken. But when the print run of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had just arrived in bookstores, the publisher, in order to avoid absenteeism, asked bookstore owners not to sell the book until schools closed in the evening. In addition, Rowling, without knowing it, provoked a craving for reading in general among the global majority of children - along with the popularity of Harry Potter, sales of other works for children, such as C. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and many, many, have skyrocketed. others.
- British writer.
Joanne Rowling was born in the town of Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire, near Bristol, became the eldest of two daughters in the family. When the future writer was nine years old, the Rowlings moved to the city of Chepstow in the county of Gwent (Wales). After graduating from high school there in 1983, Rowling entered the University of Exeter, where she studied French. This gave her the opportunity to spend a year in Paris.
After graduating from the university, having received a Bachelor of Arts degree, Rowling moved to London, where she changed several jobs. She spent most of her time in the international human rights organization Amnesty International. In 1990, the future writer moved to Manchester, and at the same time she first came up with the idea of a children's book about a wizard boy. In the same 1990, Rowling's mother died of multiple sclerosis. A few months later, Joan got a job as a teacher. of English language in Porto, the second largest city in Portugal.
In Porto, Rowling met her future husband, television journalist Jorge Arantes. They got married in 1992, from this marriage they had a daughter, Jessica (Jessica). Pretty soon, Rowling and Arantesh broke up: her husband, according to the writer, literally put her and her daughter out of the house. By Christmas 1994, Rowling was back in the UK. Together with her daughter, she moved to Edinburgh, where her younger sister Dee lived at that time. By this time, a significant part of the first novel - "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" - had already been written. In an effort to complete the book, Rowling did not take a permanent job and completed the novel in cafes, including the popular Nicolson's, owned by her relative.
In 1995, Rowling sent a white version of the novel to two literary agents, and the first returned the text almost immediately, not considering it promising, and the second - Christopher Little (Christopher Little) - nevertheless undertook to attach the manuscript. He succeeded a year later: "Harry Potter" was interested in a small London publishing house Bloomsbury. His employee Barry Cunningham (Barry Cunningham) in August 1996 offered the writer a modest advance (1500 pounds), which Rowling readily accepted.
The first printing of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" came out in 1997 and amounted to only a thousand copies, of which half went to children's libraries. The book did not make a big impression, but it was still noticed by critics. The Scottish Art Council has given Rowling a grant to help her start the second volume of Potter.
In the same year, at a professional fair of children's literature publishers in Bologna, Barry Cunningham managed to sell the rights to the American edition of Harry Potter to Scholastiс, which offered the writer an unusually large advance for a debutante - 105 thousand dollars. The writer had, however, to change the title of the book to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" ("Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone"). Subsequently, she never adapted the titles of the novels for an American audience.
The second book about Harry Potter ("Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets") appeared in 1998. That same year, Warner Bros. bought the film rights to two of Rowling's novels. They were released in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Both were directed by Chris Columbus. Rowling herself wanted to see British director Terry Gilliam as director, but the choice was up to the studio.
The third and fourth novels ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" respectively "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire") were published in 1999 and 2000 years.
Immediately after Christmas 2001 (December 26), JK Rowling remarried. This time her chosen one was the Edinburgh anesthesiologist Neil Scott Murray. The birth of two children (in March 2003, the couple had a son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, and in January 2005, a daughter, Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray) slowed down work on new continuations of the Potter series. The fifth book ("Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix", "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix") was published in 2003, and the sixth ("Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince") - in 2005
Seventh, final romance series - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" - went on sale in the UK and the US, as well as in several other countries at midnight July 21, 2007 local time. The premiere of Rowling's book was preceded by a series of leaks: several hackers and pirates posted a synopsis, and then digital photos. American edition books on the internet. An investigation by publisher Scholastic identified the sources of the leaked photos: Levy Home Entertainment (LHE) and DeepDiscount.com, which delivered approximately 1,200 copies of the novel to American readers despite the embargo. One of the buyers posted the re-shot pages of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" to file-sharing networks. In addition, two days before the novel's release, The New York Times published a review of the novel written by its lead critic, Michiko Kakutani. The author admitted that she bought the book from a New York store that also violated the embargo. Rowling and Bloomsbury and Scholastic have asked those who already have copies of the novel "not to spoil the fun for other readers."
Film adaptations of Rowling's third, fourth, and fifth novels appeared in 2004, 2006, and 2007, respectively. The sixth film ("Half-Blood Prince") was released in 2009, the seventh ("Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows") is expected to be released in two parts. The first part of "The Deathly Hallows" was released in 2010, and the second - in 2011.
Rowling repeatedly assured that the seventh novel would be the last in the series, but on the eve of its release, she did not rule out that she would write a continuation of the adventures of her heroes in the future. Her agent also announced that the writer plans to publish an encyclopedia of characters and realities from her novels.
The total world circulation of the first six Harry Potter novels amounted to 325 million copies. In March 2007, the fortune of 41-year-old Rowling was estimated by Forbes magazine at one billion dollars.
The Harry Potter novels brought the writer many awards, including the Nestle Smarties Gold Award (three times), British Book Awards, Children's Book Award (twice), The Booksellers Association / The Bookseller Author of the Year Award (twice), Scottish Arts Council Children's Book Award (twice), the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award. Rowling was made an MBE in 2000.
Rowling does a lot of charity work. In particular, she supports the Single Parents Foundation and the Multiple Sclerosis Research Foundation, the disease from which her mother died.
Rowling is named among the close friends of Sarah Brown, the wife of the current British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
October 20, 2010 Lenta.ru JK Rowling is the first recipient of the Andersen Prize
The first winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Literary Prize was the British writer JK Rowling, reports CBC News. This newly established award is given to children's writers for their closeness to Andersen's ideas.
The award ceremony took place on October 19 in Andersen's homeland, in the Danish city of Odense. The prize money for the laureate is 500,000 crowns (about $100,000).
- Screen adaptation of the first novel
- Series of novels
- Film adaptation of the series
- Pottermore
- Other books by JK Rowling
- Joan Rowling's Success Secrets
The name of JK Rowling may not be known to everyone, but everyone knows the character of her books - the young wizard Harry Potter. Books and films about him are loved by people of all ages. And how not to love them if they reflect the personality and life experience of the author?
I am not strong in national British folklore and I cannot say for sure whether there is a native English character - an analogue of Cinderella, who would work long and hard and, in the end, be fabulously rewarded for it. If there is no such character, then there is every reason to offer the English writer JK Rowling for this role - that's really whose story can really claim the status of a fairy tale. After all, there are not so many stories about how a poor teacher becomes a multimillionaire.
Success Story, JK Rowling Biography
Joanne Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 in the small town of Yate (Gloucestershire, England), 16 kilometers northeast of Bristol (although at the beginning creative way she named another city - Chipping Sothebury, where she never lived.) The reason for such discrepancies in the biography, according to the writer, was that Yate always seemed to her a gloomy place, and her publishers and advertising agents supported her in this.
Joan's father, Peter James Rowling, worked as an engineer at Rolls-Royce. Joan's mother, Ann Rowling (nee Volan), was half French and half Scottish. “My mom and dad were city dwellers in London. They met on a train from King's Cross Station to Scotland when they were both eighteen years old. My father was to join the Royal Navy, and my mother was to join the women's military unit there. My mother said that she was cold, and my father suggested that she warm herself under his coat. They married a year later, when they were nineteen, and left the navy, moving to a suburb of Bristol, in the west of England."
Childhood and youth JK Rowling
Four years after Joan's birth, the family moved from Yate and settled in Winterbourne, also near Bristol.
As a child, Joan was a small, chubby girl who wore glasses. She grew up as a dreamer, constantly inventing something, something that was not really there, and she loved to tell amazing fairy tale stories she had composed herself. She wrote her first fairy tale when she was 5 or 6 years old - it was a fairy tale about a rabbit named Rabbit who had measles and friends came to visit him with a giant bee named Miss Bee. The first listener of her fairy tales was the younger sister Dee.
“My sister Diana was born when I was a year and eleven months old. Her birthday is my earliest memory. I distinctly remember playing with plasticine in the kitchen while my father ran from room to room worrying about my mother giving birth in their bedroom. I know I didn't make up these memories because I later checked those details with my mom. I remember very clearly how after a while, holding hands with my father, we went into the bedroom and looked at my mother, lying in bed in her nightgown. Next to her lay my naked sister with a huge mop of hair on her head and looking like five years old. I know it was a false feeling, but those memories of Dee's birth were extremely colorful!"
Childhood J.K. Rowling can not be called difficult. On the contrary, it was a calm, happy childhood that the future writer spent surrounded by caring parents, her beloved sister and grandmother. Little Joan had many friends, she got along with her parents, studied well.
“I enjoyed my time at Winterbourne School. It was very creative environment. I remember that we did a lot of pottery modeling, drawing and literary history, which I really liked. However, my parents always dreamed of having their own home in this country, and when I was about nine years old, we moved to the village of Tutshill, in the county of Deans Forest.
At this time, the young JK Rowling, at the suggestion of her mother, was thoroughly carried away by literature. Joan's mother gave all her time to the family, and therefore made sure that her daughters received a good education (Anne loved to read books to children and by the age of five Joanna almost knew all the children's books by heart). Joan's elementary school, which Joan attended, was founded over 200 years ago by William Wilberforce, and it was here that the girl discovered that her favorite subject was English and reading.
The new school also has new problems. The new teacher's name was Mrs. Morgan. Joan was very afraid of her. Mrs. Morgan was seating Joan at the last desk in the right hand Push. These were places for "the dumbest". However, there were also teachers whom Rowling recalls with a smile on her face: “I had several teachers who really encouraged me to write. They, reading my work to the whole class, made me feel special. The pride I felt when my work was read to other students meant a lot to me. You never forget the teachers who told you: You can do it.”
Joan grew up as a shy child. Classmates remembered her as an unsociable, withdrawn girl, living in the world of her fantasies and constantly writing something in a notebook. Judging by the memoirs of Joan herself, it was not easy for her, but she coped.
When Rowling was 15, her family moved again. For Joan, this meant a complete change in the usual environment (it is one thing when the move occurs at a young age, another when in adolescence), parting with friends and moving into new school. Around the same time, the girl's beloved grandmother dies, her relationship with her father goes wrong, and her mother Joan becomes seriously ill with multiple sclerosis. Treatment does not give a positive result, so the woman's condition worsens every year.
“The worst thing that happened during my teenage years was my mom got sick. When I was 15, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Although most people with this disease are cured when the disease stops progressing, my mother was not so lucky. Since her diagnosis, she has gotten worse and worse every day. I think most people believe their parents are eternal. It was a terrible blow to hear that she had an incurable disease, even when I was not yet fully aware of what this terrible diagnosis meant. ”
After graduating from school, Joan decided to go to Oxford. She successfully passed the entrance exams, her name was on the list of candidates, but she never became a student at a prestigious university. After a failed attempt to become a student at Oxford University, Rowling entered the University of Exeter, choosing the specialization "Philology", where she studied French in depth. In fact, this idea belonged to her parents, who hoped that their daughter would later be able to make a career as a bilingual secretary. Although Joan herself wanted to study her native English, at the insistence of her parents she nevertheless chose the French department.
Martin Sorrell, then professor of French at the university, recalled her as "a quiet, competent student in a denim jacket and dark hair who, from an academic point of view, looked like she was doing the right thing." According to her, she didn't do any work at all, but instead made a lot of eyeliner, listened to The Smiths, and read Dickens and Tolkien.
After a year of internship in Paris, Rowling graduated from Exeter with a Bachelor of Arts degree. After receiving her education, Joan moved to London, where she changed several jobs. She was also a translator-secretary and worked in the research department of Amnesty International, but she knew that nothing suited her.
In 1990, she met a young man and together they decided to move to Manchester. However, soon the young people broke up.
The beginning of the Harry Potter story and the move to Portugal
Once, when Joan was traveling from Manchester to London, the train was delayed for four hours right on the road. Out of boredom, she looked out the window and at that moment the idea of a Harry Potter novel "come fully formed" into her mind. She had a clear image of a black-haired boy with round glasses and a scar on his forehead. Joan clearly understood that this boy was a wizard, that he would soon be invited to the school of magic, and then everything would begin ...
“I have been writing almost continuously since the age of six, but never before have I been so excited about an idea. It's weird, but I know a lot of writers do that. It was as if I had been given some of the information and I had to figure out the rest myself. Moreover, I didn’t have the feeling that I was inventing something ... To my great disappointment, I didn’t have writing pen, and I was too shy to ask anyone for a loan, but I think it was probably good. I just sat and thought while all the details bubbled up in my mind, and this skinny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Maybe if I slowed down my thoughts to get them on paper, I would suppress some of them (although sometimes I wonder how much of what I imagined then I forgot by the time I got a pen). »
Upon returning home, Joan immediately sat down at her desk and began to write. One day, the apartment in which she lived was robbed (the thieves even took away a few memorabilia left from her mother, fortunately, a shoebox full of sketches for Harry Potter did not interest them, Joan at that time did not knew that these sketches were her main treasure), and Joan had to move to a small hotel on the outskirts. The new home was uncomfortable and very cold. Only one thing was pleasing - it was quiet here, and no one interfered with writing.
In the same year, her mother died. Joan recalled: “I was writing Harry Potter when my mother died. I never told her about Harry Potter... It was a terrible time. My father, Dee and I were devastated, she was only forty-five years old - we drove away even the thought that she would die so young. I cannot forget that feeling of heaviness, as if a stone slab lay on my heart, crushing it with its weight.
Nine months after her mother's death, Joan made the decision to leave the country and start new life. In England, all the past remained, which the girl decided to consign to oblivion as soon as possible.
“At the age of 26, in an attempt to escape from despair, I went to Portugal, where I got a job as an English teacher at the Institute foreign languages. I took the Harry Potter manuscript with me, hoping that my new office hours (I taught afternoons and evenings) would give me the opportunity to work on a novel that had changed so much since my mother died." According to Rowling, this death greatly influenced her novel and she went into more detail about the loss of Harry's parents in the first book because she knew the feeling.
Marriage, separation and return home
In Porto, she met her future husband, Jorge Arantes. In 1992, their wedding took place. Soon Georges was called up for army training, and for several months he was absent. While her husband was away, Joan wrote the first three chapters of The Philosopher's Stone. Upon his return, the husband could not find work for a long time, and Joan had to work almost until the birth of her daughter. On July 27, 1993, Jessica was born to them. Just a couple of months after the birth of their daughter, her husband beat and kicked Joan out of the house with a baby in her arms.
It was 5 o'clock in the morning, in her arms her three-month-old daughter was snoring. She had no choice, and Joan went to the only native and close person- to my sister in Edinburgh (Scotland). Home.
By the end of 1993, Rowling had literally hit rock bottom. She returns to Britain with no job, no family, no money. In her arms was only a six-month-old daughter and three chapters of a new novel. Life circumstances could not but leave an imprint on her work. The book was intended for children and turned out to be not childishly gloomy. But still, Rowling remembers those years not only with a minus sign: “I hoped that when I returned from Portugal I would bring a fully finished book with me. In fact, I brought something more precious with me: my daughter.”
She could not stay with her sister for a long time, and, having rented a house, Joan and her daughter moved to a small apartment, where ... mice lived with them. Having become a single mother, almost a beggar, she was forced to live on state benefits. Rowling received £70 a week, which went entirely to meager food and some clothes for Jessie. But there was not enough money for diapers. Joan was very embarrassed about her plight. “When I first went to the post office to receive cash assistance, I felt as if a neon arrow was burning above my head, pointing everyone at me. I quickly stuffed my deposit book into my pocket so that no one in line could see what it was.. And once, when Rowling, while receiving humanitarian aid, saw that they had prepared a dirty teddy bear for Jessica, she refused and did not take it: “I felt that my previous humiliation was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw this bear.”
In order not to stay at home, Joan went out for a walk with her daughter every day. She pushed the stroller with Jessica through the streets of the town until she fell asleep. Then, having settled down with a cup of coffee at the table of a small cafe "Nicholsons", having attached a stroller with a sleeping Jessica near the window, every evening, as if obsessed, she continued to work on the "Philosopher's Stone".
Rowling is annoyed by stories about how she went to Nicholsons to save on heating: “I was not so dumb as to rent a cold apartment in the middle of winter” . If she warmed herself here, then with her soul. Nobody drove her: the sister's husband was the co-owner of the establishment. " Get famous - pay back' he laughed.
Sometimes, on rainy evenings, when it was impossible to go anywhere, they sat at home. The daughter slept peacefully, mice rustled under the floor, and Joan wrote. At that moment, it seemed to her that this period of misfortune and poverty would never end. All those problems that have fallen on her head lately were unsettling. Joan could only forget herself at her desk.
“It was a challenge. If I hadn't started writing, I would have gone crazy. In addition, I understood that if I did not finish the book in the near future, I would never finish it. Sometimes I actually hated the book and at the same time I loved it."
The end of the book and the first attempt to publish it
It so happened that the bottom on which Rowling found herself became the basis of her future success. Who knows, if it were not for the complete hopelessness that surrounded her at that time, maybe she would not have been able to finish her plan at all.
« Failure meant getting rid of everything non-essential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was different from what I really was, and began to direct all my energy towards completing the only work that meant something to me. If I had truly excelled at anything else, I would never have been able to find the determination to succeed at what was truly mine. I got free because my biggest fear came true and I was still alive, I still had a daughter I adored, I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so the stone bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
In spite of the circumstances, a new novel in 1995 is born. It took five years to invent the world. Rowling let so much information through herself that most of it was not necessary for the story at all. Starting the first book, she already knew how the last one would end. Joan redid the first chapter of The Philosopher's Stone 15 times. How did she have the strength to combine a huge job and raising a little daughter? “I didn’t do housework at all for four years” , - she admits in all seriousness.
The magical world was scattered in cardboard boxes under the bed: coded on the back of single mother's social assistance applications, in notebooks and just on scattered sheets. Lists of all students of the school of magic appeared here - with skill levels and pedigrees, as well as experiments with Latin terms and drawings. To make it easier for future illustrators, the writer depicted not only the main characters, but also magical transformations.
After finishing the last chapter of the book, Joan told her sister about it. When she told her the contents, the sister laughed to tears, she liked the story of Harry Potter. This inspired Rowling. But writing a book is only half the battle. It needs to be published. On an old typewriter bought on sale, Joan typed out several chapters, put them in a folder and sent them to a literary agent.
After sending the manuscript to literary agents and publishers, Joan eagerly awaited feedback. After some time, the answers came: Too hard for kids», « Too long», « The kids won't be interested», « We have already read something similar.», « It's a sentimental housewife's tale»... It seemed to the aspiring writer that life was losing its meaning... The younger sister came to the rescue, stating that the Rowlings did not give up, and convinced her to send the chapters to another literary agent, Christopher Little.
However, he was not interested in children's literature, so he immediately sent the manuscript to the archive. And then the case decided everything: a young employee of the agency, who was curious about what lay in the rubble, read the discarded chapters from Harry Potter. She liked the plot so much that she decided to put the text on the agent's desk again. Little read it and ... decided to immediately start advertising the book. His firm, Christopher Little Literary Agents, agreed to represent Rowling during the search for a publisher. The text was sent to twelve publishers, all of which rejected the manuscript.
A year later, when Juan was beginning to despair, the book finally got the green light (and a £1,500 advance) from editor Barry Cunningham of London's Bloomsbury.
“Finally, in August 1996, Christopher called me and said that Bloomsbury had 'made an offer'. I couldn't believe my ears! “You mean it will be published?” I asked rather stupidly “Is it really going to be published?”. I hung up the phone and screamed loudly, jumping in place. Jessica, who was sitting on her high chair drinking tea, was very frightened.”
Rowling's decision to publish the book seems to owe a lot to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of the Bloomsbury chairman, who was given the first chapter by her father to read and immediately demanded a sequel. Cunningham said that although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, he advised Rowling to find a day job, as she had little chance of making money from children's books. Rowling got a job as a French teacher. However, shortly thereafter, in 1997, Rowling received an £8,000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to keep her writing.
Publication of the first book and first success
In June 1997, Bloomsbury published The Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries (today these early copies cost between £16,000 and £25,000). On the day of the presentation, Joan was supposed to read excerpts from her book to shoppers. Only a few people came to listen to the unknown writer, nevertheless she felt happy.
When the reader tasted the tale, a boom began. Five months later, the book received its first award, the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year, and later the Children's Book Award. In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for the right to publish the novel, which was won by Scholastic Inc. for 105 thousand dollars. According to Rowling, she "almost died" when she found out about it. In October 1998, Scholastic published The Philosopher's Stone in the US under the title "Harry Potter and the Magic Stone", believing that children would not want to read a book with the word "philosopher" in the title. Rowling later claimed that she regretted the name change and would not have agreed to it if she had been in a better position then.
First, after receiving money from Scholastic, Joan bought a house in a decent area, and she and Jessica moved. They got a cat, a rabbit and a guinea pig - Jessica had long wanted some kind of pet, but before they could not afford it. But now Joan made up for lost time and desperately spoiled her daughter.
Screen adaptation of the first novel
Magic, wizards, fabulous surroundings - all this literally asked for big screen. Not surprisingly, the film adaptations were not long in coming. In 1998, Warner Bros. bought the filming rights. Pictures for a modest $1.5 million. True, deductions from sales and Rowling's close participation in the preparation of the project were stipulated.
Steven Spielberg was originally considered to direct. However, on reflection, the director himself refused. Spielberg wanted to make a cartoon, while Rowling and Warner Bros. had a different vision. In addition, Spielberg was frightened by the lack of creative motivation. The project would have been a wild commercial success anyway, regardless of the director's efforts.
There was another option with Terry Gilliam. He is a good director, and Rowling was for him, but his view does not often coincide with the vision of the mass audience, and the project had to be mass. In the end, it was decided to settle on a strong professional Chris Columbus. He knows how to work with children on the set, and family films are not new to him since the days of Home Alone.
Columbus considered Liam Aiken for the role of Harry Potter, but Rowling insisted that only British actors should be in the film. So, out of thousands of applicants for the roles of the main characters, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. The premiere took place in November 2001.
Spielberg was right, the film adaptation was doomed to success. With a fairly solid budget of $ 125 million at the box office, the film paid off many times over, literally not reaching the prestigious mark of a billion dollars. This was more than any other large-scale fantasy film adaptation - the first part of The Lord of the Rings, which came out just a month after the premiere of Harry, did not even reach 900 million. In the hearts of fans, Rowling bypassed the master and creator of the fantasy genre, John Tolkien.
Series of novels
A sequel to the first novel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July 1998. For him, Rowling again received the Smarties Award. In December 1999, a third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was released, which also won the Smarties Award, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times in a row. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from the competition in order to give other books a chance. In January 2000, The Prisoner of Azkaban won the Whitbread Awards for Children's Book of the Year, although it lost out on Book of the Year to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.
When Joan was once asked at what point in her life she realized that she was insanely popular, she answered the following: “The second tour of America was unforgettable. Because by that time the books had become very popular and I hadn't experienced before that how popular they had become - physically I hadn't experienced it. I remember driving a car to the site of the first event. There were people in line that stretched for many blocks and I said to Chris Moran, who worked for Scholastic and became my friend, "Chris, is there a sale going on right now?" And she looked at me and said: “Are you out of your mind? This is all for you". I will never forget this moment. It was the first time I realized what had happened. It was amazing and also creepy. Scary because I didn't expect this. On the last tour, although a few hundred people sometimes showed up, there was no such hype."
When the writer joined the millionaires' club, headlines like "Poor Single Mom Gets Six Figures!" decorated almost all newspapers. An inconspicuous and previously unknown woman turned into a subject of special interest for journalists who endlessly delved into the details of her personal life. In memory of these days, she created the image of a sleazy journalist in the next Harry Potter book.
The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and US on July 8, 2000 and broke sales records in both countries. 372,775 copies of the book were sold in the UK on the first day - almost the same number of copies of the previous novel were sold during the first year. In the United States, three million copies of the book were sold in the first 48 hours, breaking all sales records. Rowling admitted that she had a moment of crisis while writing the novel: “Halfway through writing the fourth book, I discovered a serious plot error… This book has some of my darkest moments… I rewrote one chapter 13 times, although no one who read it will be able to notice or understand exactly how much pain it caused me » . Rowling won the British Book Awards as Author of the Year.
Three years elapsed between the release of Goblet of Fire and the fifth novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. During this break, there were rumors in the press that Rowling was having a writer's block, which she vehemently denied. Rowling later admitted that writing this book required a lot of effort from her.
The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on July 16, 2005. She also broke all sales records, dispersing nine million copies in the first 24 hours. Prior to the release of the book, in response to a letter from a fan, Rowling wrote: "The sixth book had been planned for years, but before I started writing seriously, I spent two months revisiting the plan to be absolutely sure of what I was doing." . She noted on her website that the first chapter of Book Six, which describes a conversation between the Minister for Magic and the British Prime Minister, was first conceived as the first chapter of Philosopher's Stone, then Chamber of Secrets, then Prisoner of Azkaban. In 2006, The Half-Blood Prince won the British Book Awards for Book of the Year.
Time magazine critic Paul Gray writes: “Rowling's books bridged deep political and cultural chasms, they changed the publishing industry, and even pushed some religious fundamentalists to think about censorship. However, any evaluation of its extraordinary impact must first and foremost focus on the personal interaction that occurs between speaker and listener. And in our case - between the writer and the reader. It is in this area that Rowling has worked her miracle, and her readers speak best about it.
As you can see, on her way to her cherished dream, J.K. Rowling had to experience many difficulties, but the ability to complete the work she started led the writer to the desired one - to the very top of the literary Olympus.
Film adaptation of the series
In order for the movie to turn out the way Rowling saw it, she ensured that she was given creative control over the films. The film company largely took into account the wishes and ideas of Rowling. One of its main conditions, as already mentioned, was that the films must be made in Britain and with British actors.
The world invented by JK Rowling was recreated for filming. The School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was simulated on a computer, but the interior scenes were played out in real scenery, in six different corners Britain. If you look at photographs of the decoration of the medieval monastery of Lacock, in the Bristol region, you immediately recognize the interiors of Hogwart.
London is also featured in the first film: a vacant building in Leadenhall, a Victorian marketplace, has been turned into the fabulous Leaky Cauldron pub. True, in Prisoner of Azkaban, this pub moved to another London area - under the Stony Street railway bridge.
In an unprecedented move, Rowling also stipulated that Coca-Cola, which had won a competition to sponsor a series of films, donate $18 million to a US charitable organization and a number of other programs.
J.K. Rowling reviewed all scripts and acted as producer for the last two installments. The scripts for the first four, sixth, and seventh films were written by Steve Kloves. Rowling worked alongside him, making sure his scripts didn't conflict with future books in the series. She said she told him more about her next books than anyone else (prior to their release), but not all of them. She also gave Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) some secrets about their characters before they were revealed in the books. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) asked her if his character would die at some point. Rowling said that he would have a death scene, thus clearly not answering the question.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - the film was released in 2001, directed by Chris Columbus
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - the film was released in 2002, directed by Chris Columbus
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - the film was released in 2004, directed by Alfonso Cuaron
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - the film was released in 2005, directed by Mike Newell
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a 2007 film directed by David Yates.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a 2009 film directed by David Yates.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - the first part of the film was released in 2010, the second in 2011, directed by David Yates
The last book in the Potter series
In late December 2006, the title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was announced. In February 2007, it was revealed that Rowling had written on a bust in her hotel room at The Balmoral in Edinburgh that she had finished book seven in that room on 11 January 2007. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released on July 21, 2007 and broke its predecessor's record as the fastest-selling book of all time. On the first day, 11 million copies were sold in the UK and the US. Rowling wrote the last chapter of the book "sometime in 1990".
When she was still working on her latest book, she starred in documentary"J K Rowling... A Year In The Life", which aired in the UK on ITV on December 30, 2007. In it, Rowling visited her old Edinburgh apartment, where she finished her first Harry Potter book. When she first returned to this apartment, she was moved to tears, saying: “It was here that I really completely turned my life around.”
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rowling paid tribute to her mother for the success of the book series, saying: “The books are exactly what they are because she died…because I loved her and she died” . Harry Potter is currently a $15 billion global brand. The last four Harry Potter books have consistently set records as the best-selling books in history. It has also been acknowledged that the Harry Potter books sparked an interest in reading among young people at a time when children were thought to be abandoning books in favor of computers and television.
Pottermore
There is one unpleasant trend in the world: less and less books are read, and Joan has to switch to more mobile devices to develop your creativity. In June 2011, Rowling announced that all Harry Potter related material would be collected in a new web project. This is how the Pottermore website was born. “I wanted to give a gift to all the fans of Harry, who have closely followed the fate of my hero for many years. In addition, I want this story to be immortalized for future generations. Everyone will be able to contribute to Pottermore, the resource will be fully interactive".
The project website contains many additional information about the characters, places and objects of the Harry Potter universe. Pottermore includes elements of a social network and computer game. Each user on the site can have a personal page where he will put his drawings, stories and any other fan art dedicated to Harry Potter. As if “sliding” into the world of a book, users choose magical names for themselves and begin their journey. They wander through the chapters of the book and earn points by studying in a magical school. It is possible to comment on and even rewrite certain chapters, creating your own story. And, of course, the site opened on July 31, Harry Potter's birthday!
Other books by JK Rowling
In July 2011, Rowling parted ways with her literary agent Christopher Little and moved to a new agency founded by one of his employees, Neil Blair, noting that it was a difficult decision. On February 23, 2012, Rowling's new agency announced on their website that Rowling was about to publish a new adult-oriented book. In a press release, Rowling noted the differences between her new project and the Potter series, saying: « While writing the Harry Potter series gave me the same pleasure, my next novel will be very different from it.» . On April 12, 2012, it was announced that the book would be titled The Random Vacancy and would be released on September 27, 2012. Rowling has given several interviews and speeches in support of the book. In the first three weeks after its release, The Random Job sold over a million copies worldwide. On December 3, 2012, it was announced that the BBC would film The Random Vacancy as a TV series.
Today, JK Rowling's books have been translated into 65 languages, with over 500,000,000 copies sold. JK Rowling's fortune is estimated at one billion dollars! Today she is the highest paid writer of our time. The Harry Potter novels have brought the author many awards and incredible success. Prince Charles honored her with an MBE for her outstanding contribution to children's literature. And the fact that Rowling writes more for children than for someone else is evidenced by her other works. For example, such fairy tales as: “Hare Hare and her stump-tooth rock”, “Fountain of Fairy Fortune”, “The Tale of Three Brothers”, “The Furry Heart of the Sorcerer”, “The Sorcerer and the Jumping Pot”, written by her in 2008.
However, JK Rowling pleases not only the kids with her creativity. More recently, she has acknowledged the authorship of a detective novel, which she published in April 2013 under a pseudonym. Rowling says she enjoyed working on behalf of a fictional author because it relieves the writer of the pressure to live up to readers' expectations and meet their own standards of quality. In addition, Rowling noted that the absence of her name on the cover allowed her to receive an objective response to her work.
A novel called "The Cuckoo's Calling" (not published in Russia, possible translation - "Cuckoo's Cry") was published by a writer under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The publisher claimed that the author was a former military man who worked for private security structures after his retirement.
The Cuckoo's Cry is narrated from the perspective of a private detective investigating the death of a fashion model who fell from a balcony. The book is set in London. According to the writer herself, she was inspired by the classic detective stories from Phyllis Dorothy James and Ruth Rendell. It is worth noting that the novel received positive reviews from outside. recognized masters genre, and now for the right to film this work, several film companies are fighting at once.
“I have no idea where my book ideas come from, I hope I never find out. All the fun will be lost if it suddenly turns out that there is just a small convolution in the brain that makes me fantasize.
JK Rowling's personal and family life
In her personal life, J.K. Rowling seems to be getting better too. On December 26, 2001, she remarried - to the anesthetist Neil Scott Murray. The wedding ceremony took place in Perthshire in 2001, and two years later the happy couple were already congratulated on the birth of their son David Gordon. Two years later, in 2005, their daughter Mackenzie Jean was born.
“After my first marriage, I felt shell-shocked. Seven years passed before I met the perfect man. Now I know for sure: love is the most significant thing in the world. What is stronger than the words "I love you"? They are stronger than fear stronger than death. Love wins. After all, when someone dies, love for him does not disappear ... One day my good friend asked: “What kind of man would you like to meet?” I said that I want to be with someone who is smart - for me it is very valuable ... To be an accomplished person with a career. Integrity and kindness are very important, as well as self-understanding.”
But even after becoming a VIP person from literature and the happy wife of Dr. Neil Murray, Joan continued to be afraid deep down. To be afraid of interference in her life by Jorge Arantes. Jessica's first husband and father. At one terrible moment it happened. After undergoing treatment at a drug clinic, he gave a boastful interview about how he "pushed this obnoxious wife with her screaming baby out the door of his apartment." The interview was not a bomb. Who could be interested in a man who lost his life?
After that, Arantes was very remorseful for his act. In an interview with British reporters, he tearfully apologized to Joan. One sunny morning Joan, reading his confession in the newspaper, breathed a sigh of relief. She felt that someday it had to happen. She realized that she was now free from her past. On this day, she did not manage to sit down for work. For the first time in her life, Joan went to a jewelry store and chose an aquamarine ring to match the color of her eyes. " This ring will remind me that no one will ever humiliate me again." she said, looking at the beautiful big gem.
To the question of a journalist - "What do you like to do when you are not working?", Rowling, without hesitation, answers: “Take the kids to some fun place or - I'm quite a creative person - I like to draw, listen to music. Not very interesting answers, right? But it's true. Oh, and I love to cook. I like to cook. I love baking."
For fans of JK Rowling, the following information will be of interest: her favorite color is pink, her favorite food is sushi, her favorite sound is "My husband's snoring when I want to sleep" , favorite sport - « Quidditch, of course» The quality she most admires in a person is courage.
Surprisingly, Joan is still sentimental, and the snowfall of money did not freeze her nature, leaving subtle sensuality to turn green in her soul. Let's say she can't kill her hero without crying. This initially puzzled Neil, the husband, who one day saw a strange picture: Joan opens the door of her office and, shedding tears, rushes to his kitchen. When asked what happened, she said: "I just killed a character".
Although the writer's books are published under the pseudonym "J. K. Rowling" when the first Harry Potter book was published, her name was simply "JK Rowling". Anticipating that the target audience of boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers required her to use two initials rather than her full name. Since she did not have a middle name, she chose the second initial K for her pseudonym - after the name of her paternal grandmother. She herself calls herself "Jo" (Eng. Jo) and says: "No one ever called me Joan when I was young, unless they were angry with me."
A funny resonance was caused by the adventures of Harry Potter in the circles of professional magicians and illusionists. In Germany, Eberhard Barmann, president of Berlin's Sauberfreunde magic club, said parents and grandparents are increasingly approaching them to tell them where their children can learn magic tricks and tricks. Barmann's colleague Wilfred Possin, who heads the wizarding organization in Frankfurt, directly attributes this explosion of interest in sorcery to the influence of the Harry Potter books. " It is thanks to them he says with obvious pleasure. our profession is in the spotlight».
As Rowling recalls, at school she had a period of passion for punk style.
Rowling does not hide the fact that she is an introvert: writing implies a focus on inner world. Only recently has she loosened up a bit and has become more willing to give television interviews.
In 2012, Forbes did not include Rowling in the ranking of the richest people, saying that she lost her billionaire status due to donations to charity. For example, J.K. Rowling supports organizations such as Laughter Relief, and in 2010 donated £10 million to the Clinic for Regenerative Neurology, which researches and treats multiple sclerosis, from which her mother, Anne Rowling, died. The clinic, created by the writer at the University of Edinburgh, bears the name of her mother.
During one interview, Joan was asked if she herself came up with magic spells and names, which are so many in her fairy tales, or are they genuine? « Spells invented she replied. - I met people who assured me in all seriousness that they were trying to conjure with them. But I can assure you, also in all seriousness, that my spells do not work.».
When Joan was writing Harry Potter, she often listened to Pyotr Tchaikovsky's violin concerto.
She still likes to write by hand. She usually creates the first draft using pen and paper, and then types on the computer. Joan prefers a black pen and likes to write on narrow sheets of transparent paper. Of course, like all authors, if there is no notebook at hand, she has to write down thoughts on the most strange and inappropriate objects. So, the names of Hogwarts faculties were written on a hygiene bag in an airplane.
Joan is warmed by memories of adolescence in an ivy-covered suburban cottage. From this period, Rowling took many ideas and even the name of her character (the brother and sister Potters lived next door), but, in her own words, she copied the characters of Harry, Ron and Herminone from the intolerant and embarrassed teenager she knew well - from herself then. The red-haired Ron also reveals the features of Sean Harris, a faithful friend to whom she dedicated the Chamber of Secrets. The old Ford Anglia, Sean's first car, has become a flying car in the novel, the boys are catching up with the train on it.
J.K. Rowling's books appear on the list of disapproved by the Church. Not everyone likes witch hats on children, spells and midnight readings in gothic interiors. If magic is seen as part of a fairy tale or a game, it is harmless. But suddenly immature minds will believe that with the help of witchcraft you can succeed and avoid the fate prepared for everyone? "I'll get over it, Mark Twain and Salinger were also banned, - says the writer. - Until now, not a single child has told me that after reading Harry Potter he decided to devote himself to the occult.». On the contrary, the benefits of J.K. Rowling's books can be traced in the assessments that young readers give to the works. For example, nine-year-old Tyler Walton, who underwent a painful course of treatment for leukemia, in an essay on the topic: "How the Harry Potter books changed my life" writes: “Harry Potter helped me get through the most difficult and scary times. Sometimes I think that we are similar to each other with Harry Potter. He, too, was forced to find himself in a situation that was beyond his control, and was forced to face an enemy that he was not at all sure of the possibility of defeating. Twelve-year-old Greta Hagen-Richardson from Chicago is delighted with Rowling's books and gives accurate statistics: " I have read each Harry Potter book 15, 11, 22 and 24 times (note: each volume is counted!). I immediately felt that their characters are directly related to me - they are children. They, like all the guys, have to deal with insolent and bad teachers. It helps me better understand the people around me. It motivated me to read more».
Joan Rowling's Success Secrets
At Harvard in 2008, Rowling said: “The main step for me was getting rid of non-essential activities. I stopped telling myself that I meant nothing in this world and directed all my energy to finishing the main work that really meant something to me. If I had done anything else, I would never have been able to find the determination to succeed in the one area that I really belonged to. So writing books became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
“When I wrote the Harry Potter book, no one knew what I was writing, I didn’t show the manuscript to anyone until the last point, after which I handed over the text to the publisher. The first person to see my book was always the publisher. If I shared the book with my family, it would be tantamount to killing this idea at the very moment of its inception. Once, I already shared the plot of a fairy tale about a boy who ended up in an unusual Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This man was not a relative, just an acquaintance, but I saw surprise and indignation on his face - they say, what nonsense! In Agatha Christie, I found in her biography book that her first husband criticized all her ideas. For a writer, this is simply not acceptable. Since the broken illusions of writers are the collapse of their inner world.
“Let them laugh at you, let them consider you an ugly duckling - do not expect from society, and often even from close people, that they will tell you the most important, most important words:“ I believe in your success! I believe in you! I believe in your future!" You will most likely never hear it. The main thing is to repeat them to yourself!”
Undoubtedly, Harry Potter is a phenomenon of public consciousness, and this applies to both children and adults. Recognition by the younger generation is quite understandable: main character- their age, and even a "nerd" with glasses. On the one hand, he is sweet, modest and kind, like Cinderella. On the other hand, he is a “star” in his own world, hidden from the majority, a powerful wizard who defeats enemies and does not require praise for this.
Every child recognizes himself in Harry in some way, and would certainly like to be in his place. And the situations unfolding in the school - albeit a magical one, but still a school - are understandable and familiar to every child from the inside. Young readers and viewers get acquainted with Harry Potter on the day when he turns eleven years old, and each new book about him is a new stage in their real life, they grow with him.
Peculiarity literary fairy tale JK Rowling is also in the fact that it is of interest not only to children, but also to adults: the author addresses all dreamers, regardless of age. It is the magic and the world full of wonders that make the story of the magician boy so appealing to adults. Psychologists believe that by reading books and watching films about Potter, the adult generation escapes from the difficult reality, rests from the gray everyday life.
“If someone asked me about my recipe for happiness, I would say that you first need to find out what you like to do most in life, and then find someone who will pay you for it. I consider it a great success that my occupation contains me "
“All people want their life to be comfortable. But wisdom says: life is suffering. I really like these words. Because life doesn't have to be comfortable. And in this I find solace - for myself and for everyone who is confused in life. You will find a way out. And I'm sure I'm bound to get into some trouble. I only hope that they will be on a slightly smaller scale than before.”
JK Rowling is a charming woman who has come a long way to her success. Many difficulties arose on her way, but they did not break the writer. She is a great example of how important it is to finish what you start, because every random idea can prepare a stunning success.
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July 31 is not only the birthday of the favorite character of millions of people around the world, Harry Potter , but also the author of a series of books about "the boy who survived" - Joanne Rowling . Probably everyone knows that Harry was born in 1990 on a napkin, while Rowling, who was then barely making ends meet, was waiting for the train, but not everyone knows that:
The need for initials, which, according to the idea of the publishers, hid the gender of the author, forced Joan to choose some letter in addition to "Jay" and she decided to stop at "Kay" in memory of her beloved grandmother. By the way, due to the fact that it was initially unknown who wrote the Harry saga - a man or a woman - the first letter from a fan began: "Dear sir." Herself J.K. She said later: "It was the decision of the publishing house, but they could call me anything, even Enid Snodgrass, I didn't care - I just really wanted the book to be published."
One of the coffee shops in Edinburgh, where Joan wrote her first books, accompanied by her sleeping daughter Jessica.
There is a very personal reason why King's Cross plays such an important role in the lives of Harry and his friends (this is where young wizards leave platform 9 3/4 every year to study at Hogwarts). This London station is the meeting place for the parents of today's birthday girl. "For me, King's Cross is a very, very romantic place, the most romantic station solely because my parents met here for the first time. Therefore, this place has always been part of our family" folklore ". I wanted Harry to get to Hogwarts by train and, of course, he was supposed to leave from Kings Cross," Joan said in an interview. By the way, in addition to the birthday, Rowling and Potter are united by one more fact - both fathers had a name named James.
"Usually, real people inspire character creation, but once they're in your head, they turn into something else. Professor Snape and Gilderoy Lockhart both "started" as exaggerated versions of people I knew, but on the pages of the book they turned out to be different. And here Hermione looks like me at 11 years old, only she is much smarter. Apparently, this is why Hermione's patronus is Rowling's favorite animal - the otter.
At 25, Joan became a single mother after a short "disastrous" marriage. In an interview, the writer and screenwriter said: “It dawned on me what a mess was going on in my life. We were as poor as possible without becoming homeless, living on welfare. And at that moment I fell into a deep depression. It is difficult to describe this is a state for someone who has never been in it, because it is not sadness. I know sadness. When you are sad, you cry, you feel something. Depression is a cold absence of feelings, emptiness. This is what Dementors are."
Quidditch was invented in a hotel in Manchester after a quarrel with a then-boyfriend. “I thought about the fact that sport unites society, that men are keenly worried about events on the playing field, angry, which in my condition was very useful,” Rowling wrote in a book dedicated to the most popular game of the Potters. Joan considers basketball to be the Muggle version of Quidditch. In an interview Amazon she said: “There was a need for a game for wizards, and I always wished there was a game with more than one ball. This idea struck me as funny. I had a lot of fun making up the rules - I still have a notebook with diagrams, diagrams and all the names for balls that came to my mind before I settled on the Quaffle, Bludger and Snitch.
"After finishing the books about Harry, I realized that the character with whom I would like to have dinner is Dumbledore. We have something to discuss and I would be happy with his advice. I think everyone in life would like to meet Dumbledore," she said as- then Rowling, adding that she often dreams of Albus. The name "Dumbledore" has a backstory - it means "bee" in Old English, and the author chose it because she "imagined the professor humming to herself".
In the books about "the boy who lived", the number seven - one of the most powerful magic numbers - occupies a special place:
- seven books about Harry;
- study at Hogwarts lasts seven years;
- there are seven players on the Quidditch team;
- Voldemort has seven Horcruxes;
- the Weasley family has seven children;
- there are seven locks on Professor Moody's chest;
- seven times Harry escaped death at the hands of Voldemort before he killed him.
While living in Winterbourne, near Bristol, little Joan met and became friends with the Potters - brother and sister. The girl liked their last name more than her own, which was always either mispronounced or transformed into nicknames like rolling pin, i.e. "rolling pin".
Rowling's eldest daughter, born in a short, as we recall, marriage to TV journalist Jorge Arantes, is named after Jessica Mitford: “Mitford has been my idol ever since I was 14 years old. My great aunt told how, at the age of 19, Jessica ran away from home to Spain, to the very epicenter civil war while secretly buying a camera with his father's money. It was the camera that hooked me, and I began to ask about the future fate of this girl.
In 2001, Joan married a second time - her chosen one was a doctor Neil Murray with whom the writer has two common children: a son and a daughter. Due to the overwhelming popularity of her books, Rowling had to buy her wedding dress incognito, resorting to disguise for the first time: "I just wanted to marry Neal without any fuss." But how and with what help the disguise was carried out, we did not find out. “What if I have to use it again?” Joan said to inquisitive journalists.
"A bracelet hung with charms at first glance seems like just a cool little thing. But what other piece of jewelry is so filled with memories? These are personal amulets. I had an adorable bracelet for 20 years, but one day it was stolen from my apartment in Manchester, along with all the contents of the box. I lost not only the bracelet, but also the jewelry that I inherited from my mother, who died just three months before. Compared to the loss of my mother, this was a trifle, but I was very upset. Jewelry does not change, does not deteriorate, this is a kind of guide to the past," Rowling shared with readers. Harper's Bazaar. On the day of the release of the seventh book about Harry, the editor Bloomsbury, Emma, gave Joan a gold bracelet with Harry Potter-inspired charms: a small gold snitch, a silver car Ford Anglia, a pool of memory and a patronus in the form of a deer and a philosopher's stone, and, according to the writer, this was the most expensive piece of jewelry for her after the engagement ring.
Both actors admitted that at one time they were in love with "Hermione" and the awkwardness associated with this circumstance sometimes prevented them from concentrating on the text of the script. True, when the feelings subsided and the young actors became just friends, it was also not easy to shoot some scenes: for example, during the kiss of Daniel and Emma, "Ron" laughed so hard that he had to be taken out of film set. By the way, according to the director's idea, before the start of filming, this trio, inseparable in terms of the plot, had to write a short essay about their characters in order to "get to know" them better. The result was in the spirit of Harry, Ron and Hermione: Emma Watson filled out 16 pages, Daniel limited himself to one sheet, and Rupert did not pass the essay at all.
This Canadian girl adored Harry and, alas, was terminally ill. Her mother asked Rowling to write a letter to Natalie. The message reached the writer too late, and Joan's response, in which she told her fan about the future fate of each of the characters, was received by a heartbroken mother. The women kept up a correspondence and subsequently became friends, and Natalie became part of the Gryffindor house for her bravery and resilience in the face of leukemia.
From a short essay posted on the website Pottermore we learned that Joan feels guilty about her death Floriana Fortescue- the owner of an ice cream parlor in Diagon Alley: “I made it so that he was kidnapped and killed for no reason. He is not the first wizard killed by Voldemort, but only because of him I feel remorse, because only I am to blame for his death. "The original idea was that Fortescue would help the Hogwarts trio in search of Horcruxes: "guide" in finding clues, so I introduced him to Harry at the very beginning of our story. The problem was that when I started writing the key moments of the Deathly Hallows, I decided that Phineas Nigellus Black would be a more convenient source of information.
One of Rowling's most expensive things is the first edition of Jane Austen's book: "She is my favorite writer, I have read her books so many times that I have lost count ... If you could become a literary character, then I would Elizabeth Bennet, of course". Another book heroine that sunk into the heart is Jo March from "Little Women", because "she had an explosive temper and an irresistible desire to write books." But to dine of all writers - living or dead - Joan I would like with Charles Dickens.
But Rowling is not at all worried about this. She hasn't seen the movie and doesn't plan to.
And her younger sister, Diana, became her first devoted reader. The book was about a rabbit named ... A rabbit who did a lot of things atypical for his big-eared comrades. “As soon as I realized that books are being written, I realized the concept of writing stories, all I wanted to do was write. I don’t remember that I wanted to do something else in my life,” Rowling said in an interview with the TV channel ABC.
"I'm sorry to disappoint my fans and maybe some of them will be angry with me, but to be completely honest, then, recently, moving away from this story, I understand that I made the choice in favor of Ron purely for literary reasons and in order not to change the originally planned plot," Joan said in a recent interview. “Mrs. Weasley” agrees with her: “I’m sure there are fans who doubt in the same way whether Ron could make Hermione happy,” believes Emma Watson.
After finishing work on the seventh book, she left the following inscription on a bust in a Scottish hotel room Balmoral: "JK Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (652) on January 11, 2007". But this is far from the most highly artistic painting of the author, dedicated to her beloved Harry - in Rowling's house there is such a self-decorated chair:
Having lived on the brink of poverty for so many years, she is not fully aware of her current well-being. When asked by Oprah Winfrey if she accepted the fact that she would now be always rich, Rowling replied: "No, and you?", referring to the psychological, not the monetary side of the issue. But periodic outbursts of concern for the well-fed future of her family do not at all prevent Joan from doing charity work: helping orphans and funding funds to support people suffering from incurable diseases.
We sincerely congratulate the "Cinderella of the World of Literature" on her birthday and hope that she will continue to delight us with new books both under her own name and !
Joanne Rowling was born July 31, 1965 in Chipping Sothebury, Gloucestershire, England. Her sister, Dee, was born two years later. Rowling loved to tell stories from early childhood and wrote her first fairy tale when she was 5 or 6 years old - it was about a rabbit named Rabbit who had measles and was visited by friends with a giant bee named Miss Bee. She moved twice as a child. Both times to cities near Bristol: first to Eith, then to Winterbourne. The family moved again when she was nine years old - to Tutshill. She attended elementary school in Tutshill and high school and Viedine.
At the time, she was quiet, freckled, nearsighted, and terribly unathletic. Her favorite subjects are English and other languages. She used to tell stories to her friends - where they all performed brave and heroic deeds that they would not have dared to do in real life.
She entered the University of Exeter straight out of high school and studied French at the urging of her parents, who said she could make a career as a bilingual secretary. She spent several years studying at the university and working as the “worst secretary in the world”.
In 1991, at the age of 26, she went to Portugal to teach English. She says she liked it. She gave lessons in the afternoon and evening, and composed in the morning. During this time, she began working on her third novel (the first two are dismissed as "very bad"). The new book was about a boy who discovers that he is a wizard and ends up in a magical school. In Portugal, she met a Portuguese journalist and married him. Their daughter, Jessica, was born in 1993.
After the divorce, Rowling and her daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, closer to Dee's younger sister. Rowling's goal was to complete the Harry novel before she started working as a French teacher, and of course try to get it published. She wrote on a coffee table while Jessica slept. The Scottish Arts Council gave her a grant to complete the book and, after a series of rejections, she eventually sold Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to Bloomsbury (UK) for US$4,000.
When the first Harry Potter book came out, the publisher insisted on writing J.K. Rowling's name on the cover only with initials - such a trick should not scare away the purchase of boys, who for the most part do not like books by female authors. And since the writer did not have a middle name from birth, she chose the name of her grandmother Kathleen for her initials, and since then she has been known as J. K. Rowling.
A few months later, Arthur A Levine/Study Literature buys the American rights to the book for enough money to make her quit teaching. The book was published in the UK in June 1997 (sold for £12,000/US$20,000 at the time of writing the first edition of this book). At that moment, recognition came. Harry Potter wins the UK Book of the Year award and the Smarties Prize. Retitled Harry Potter and the Wizard's Stone, the book was published in the US in September 1998. The next, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in the UK in July 1998 and in the US in June 1999. The third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was published in the UK in July 1999 and in the US in September 1999.
In 1999, Rowling becomes an international literary sensation when the first three books in the Harry Potter series hit the top 3 positions on the New York Times bestseller list - having achieved similar success in the UK. In the summer of 2000, over 35 million copies of the first three books, in 35 languages, were sold for approximately $480 million. In July 2000, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire had a first print run of 5.3 million with advance orders of over 1.8 million. "Order of the Phoenix", "Half-Blood Prince" and "Deathly Hallows" also became leaders in terms of circulation and collections. The total circulation of all seven books about the adventures of Harry Potter amounted to 400 million copies. In 2000, Warner Brothers released a film based on the first Harry Potter book; in 2011, the premiere of the eighth and final film took place - the final novel was divided into two parts by a whim of filmmakers. All eight films were top-grossing worldwide.
Rowling says that she wrote Harry Potter when “I was in a really bad place and I had to achieve something. If I didn't challenge, I would go crazy." Now the story of Harry Potter and his struggle with the Dark Lord is one of the most popular children's books and already bears the proud title of "children's book of the millennium", although, of course, it is difficult to consider it entirely a children's book.