Meghan+Weedon

Thesis- J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series with the influences of a secondary school friend, the difficulty of her childhood, and of course her parents.


 * 1) Rowling made publishing history when her books hit the top of the (adult) best-seller lists in both theUnited States and the U.K. in 2000.
 * 2) Born in Chipping Sodbury, England
 * 3) Born July 31, 1965
 * 4) Rowling was born in July 1965 at Yate General Hospital
 * 5) Her sister Dianne (Di) was born at their home on 28 June 1967
 * 6) Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling
 * 7) The depression and difficult childhood that inspired her to write the Harry Potter books.
 * 8) Wrote 7 books for the Harry Potter
 * 9) Sean Harris influenced JK Rowling to write (a friend in secondary school)
 * 10) While unemployed she completed her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1996)
 * 11) Rowling one of the world's most successful and wealthiest authors
 * 12) Her books, which appeal to both young and adult audiences, have sold in the multimillions
 * 13) Books have been translated in more than 60 languages
 * 14) Rowling has published two books related to the series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch through the Ages (both: 2001)
 * 15) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (June 26 1997)
 * 16) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (July 2 1998)
 * 17) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (July 8 1999)
 * 18) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (July 8 2000)
 * 19) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (June 21 2003)
 * 20) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 16 2005)
 * 21) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (July 21 2007)
 * 22) In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels for a seven-figure sum
 * 23) A film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 16 November 2001
 * 24) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on 15 November 2002
 * 25) 4 June 2004 saw the release of the film version of Prisoner of Azkaban
 * 26) The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Firereleased on 18 November 2005
 * 27) The film of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released on 11 July 2007
 * 28) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on 15 July
 * 29) the final part of the seriesHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would be filmed in two segments with part one released in November 2010 and part two released in July 2011
 * 30) //Forbes// has named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books
 * 31) the second-richest female entertainer
 * 32) the 1,062nd richest person in the world
 * 33) On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray
 * 34) Rowling's youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Half-Blooded Prince, was born 23 January 200
 * 35) Rowling has also written two small volumes, which appear as the titles of Harry’s school books within the novels
 * 36) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (supplement to the //Harry Potter// series) (2001)
 * 37) Quidditch Through the Ages (supplement to the //Harry Potter// series) (2001)
 * 38) The Tales of Beedle the Bard (supplement to the //Harry Potter// series) (2008
 * 39) Harry Potter prequal (July 2008)
 * 40) 1997: Nestle Smarties Book Prize, Gold Award for //Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone//
 * 41) 1998: Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, Gold Award for //Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets//
 * 42) 1998: Bristh Children's Book of the Year, winner //Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone//
 * 43) 1999: Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, Gold Award for //Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban//
 * 44) 1999: British Children's Book of the Year, winner //Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets//
 * 45) 1999: Whitbread Children's Book of the Year, winner //Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban//
 * 46) 2000: British Book Awards, Author of the Year.
 * 47) 2000: Order of the British Empire, Officer.
 * 48) 2003: Premio Principe de Asturias, Concord.
 * 49) 2006: British Book of the Year, winner for //Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince//
 * 50) 2007: Blue Peter Badge, Gold.
 * 51) 2008: British Book Awards, Outstanding Achievement.
 * 52) 2009: Legion d'honneur, presented by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
 * 53) 2010: Hans Christian Andersen Literature Awards, inaugural award winner.
 * 54) Honorary degrees: St Andrews University, University of Edinburgh, Napier university, University of Exeter, Harvard University
 * 55) The worst thing that happened during my teenage years was my mother becoming ill
 * 56) Her name when her first //Harry Potter// book was published was simply "Joanne Rowling".
 * 57) Fearing 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
 * 58) She has no middle name
 * 59) she chose //K// as the second initial of her pen name from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling.
 * 60) Everyone calls her "Jo"
 * 61) Unless they are mad at her
 * 62) As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister
 * 63) 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
 * 64) She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother, Anne, had worked as a technician in the Science Department
 * 65) Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books
 * 66) Ron Weasley [Harry Potter's best friend] isn't a living portrait of Sean, but he really is very Sean-ish
 * 67) While she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry came into her mind
 * 68) Their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes, was born on 27 July 1993
 * 69) During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, and contemplated suicide
 * 70) It was the feeling of her illness which brought her the idea of Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book.
 * 71) It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head
 * 72) that she introduced much more detail about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.
 * 73) The description in 'Philosopher's Stone' of the photographs of 'what appeared to be a beach ball wearing different coloured bobble hats' would also apply to the pictures of my early years
 * 74) Had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before
 * 75) didn't have a functioning pen with me, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one
 * 76) No; I write most days when I am working hard on a book (like now), but every day would be hard on my children
 * 77) Where do you get your names? I’ve always ‘collected’ – that’s to say, remembered - unusual names and finally found a use for them! I love names; sad to say, I really enjoy reading lists of them, for me it’s like casting an eye over a pile of unwrapped presents, each of the names representing a whole person. War memorials, telephone directories, shop fronts, saints, villains, baby-naming books – you name it, I’ve got names from it! I also make up names, the most popular one being ‘quidditch’, of course.
 * 78) Where do you get your idea?
 * 79) The Harry Potter books are distributed in over 200 territories and are translated into 69 languages
 * 80) Rowling supports a wide number of charities and causes

"Rowling, J. K.(Brief biography)." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed., 2006 Online Supplement. 7th ed. Columbia University Press, 2006. 126. Student Edition. Web. 6 Dec. 2010.

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