J.K. Rowling

Born

in Yate, South Gloucestershire, England, The United Kingdom

July 31, 1965

Website

http://www.jkrowling.com

Twitter

jk_rowling

Genre

Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy

Influences

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

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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 (née 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’t particularly happy. I think it’s 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

Combine Editions
J.K. Rowling's Books

Average rating: 4.42 · 14,917,213 ratings · 313,539 reviews · 125 distinct works · Similar authors

	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator) 4.42 avg rating — 3,865,651 ratings — published 1997 — 421 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) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator) 4.50 avg rating — 1,672,609 ratings — published 1999 — 304 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 GrandPré (Illustrator) 4.59 avg rating — 1,580,816 ratings — published 2007 — 238 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 GrandPré (Illustrator) 4.44 avg rating — 1,610,979 ratings — published 2003 — 252 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 GrandPré (Illustrator) 4.50 avg rating — 1,592,825 ratings — published 2000 — 286 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) by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator) 4.34 avg rating — 1,608,645 ratings — published 1998 — 318 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 GrandPré (Illustrator) 4.51 avg rating — 1,536,434 ratings — published 2005 — 235 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 4.01 avg rating — 240,557 ratings — published 2008 — 82 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 Boxset (Harry Potter, #1-7) 4.73 avg rating — 179,438 ratings — published 1998 — 60 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 Casual Vacancy 3.26 avg rating — 224,464 ratings — published 2012 — 134 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 GrandPré (Illustrator)
4.45 avg rating — 14,259,123 ratings

Hogwarts Library (3 books)
by J.K. Rowling, Kennilworthy Whisp (Pseudonym)
3.97 avg rating — 514,575 ratings

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Quotes by J.K. Rowling

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

tags: from-charles-bayard-miliken, misattributed-j-k-rowling

73453 likes

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

tags: abilities, choices

40045 likes

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

tags: dreams, life

38599 likes

See all J.K. Rowling's quotes »

Polls

Who is your favorite Fantasy author?

Brandon Sanderson

1 vote, 50.0%

George R.R. Martin

1 vote, 50.0%

J.R.R. Tolkien

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Steven Erikson

0 votes, 0.0%

J.K. Rowling

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Robert Jordan

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Any Other

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2 total votes

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