J. K. Rowling

J. K. Rowling CH OBE HonFRSE FRCPE FRSL
Rowling in 2010
Born	Joanne Rowling (1965-07-31) 31 July 1965 Yate, Gloucestershire, England
Pen name	J. K. Rowling Robert Galbraith
Occupation	Author philanthropist film producer television producer screenwriter
Alma mater	University of Exeter Moray House
Period	1997–present
Genre	Fantasy drama young adult fiction crime fiction
Notable works	Harry Potter series Cormoran Strike series
Spouse	Jorge Arantes ​ ​ (m. 1992; div. 1995)​ Neil Murray ​ (m. 2001)​
Children	3
Signature
Website
jkrowling.com

Joanne Rowling, CH, OBE, HonFRSE, FRCPE, FRSL (/ˈroʊlɪŋ/ ROH-ling; born 31 July 1965), known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author, philanthropist, film producer, and screenwriter. She is the author of the Harry Potter series, which has won multiple awards and sold more than 500 million copies as of 2018, and became the best-selling book children's series in history in 2008. The books are the basis of a popular film series. She also writes crime fiction under the pen name Robert Galbraith.

Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International in 1990 when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London. The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997. There were six sequels, of which the last was released in 2007. Since then, Rowling has written several books for adult readers: The Casual Vacancy (2012) and—under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—the crime fiction Cormoran Strike series. In 2020, her "political fairytale" for children, The Ickabog, was released in instalments in an online version.

Rowling has progressed from living on benefits to being named the world's first billionaire author by Forbes. Rowling disputed the assertion, saying she was not a billionaire. Forbes reported that she lost her billionaire status after giving away much of her earnings to charity. Her UK sales total in excess of £238 million, making her the best-selling living author in Britain. The 2021 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £820 million, ranking her as the 196th richest person in the UK. Rowling was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to literature and philanthropy. She established the Volant Charitable Trust to support at-risk women, children and young people and has supported multiple charities, including Comic Relief, Gingerbread, and multiple sclerosis (MS) and coronavirus disease 2019 causes as well as launching her own charity, Lumos.

Time named her a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans. In October 2010, she was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors. Rowling has voiced views on UK politics, especially in opposition to Scottish independence and Brexit, and has been critical of her relationship with the press. Since late 2019, she has publicly expressed her opinions on transgender people and related civil rights. These have been criticised as transphobic by LGBT rights organisations and some feminists, but have received support from other feminists and individuals.

Name

Although she writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling, before her remarriage her name was Joanne Rowling, or Jo. At birth, she had no middle name. Staff at Bloomsbury Publishing asked that she use two initials rather than her full name, anticipating that young boys—their target audience—would not want to read a book written by a woman. She chose K (for Kathleen) as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother, and because of the ease of pronunciation of two consecutive letters. Following her 2001 remarriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry into the practices and ethics of the British press, she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling.

Life and career

Early life and education

Rowling's parents met on a train from King's Cross Station; her portal to the magical world is "Platform 9 3/4" at King's Cross.

Joanne Rowling's parents, Anne Rowling (née Volant) and Peter "Pete" James Rowling, met in 1964 when they were both 18 and shared a compartment on a nine-hour train trip departing from King's Cross Station, London bound for their naval posting at Arbroath, Scotland. Pete's father, Ernie, was a machine-tool setter who would later open a grocery shop; Parker writes in The New Yorker that Anne's family was "solidly middle class and educated". As their relationship developed, the couple decided to leave behind the naval life, as they "wanted a rural upbringing" for the baby they were expecting, according to biographer Sean Smith. They married on 14 March 1965 when both were 19 at All Saints Parish Church in Tufnell Park. They settled in Yate, where Pete started work as an assembly-line production worker at the Bristol Siddeley factory, which would later become a part of Rolls-Royce. Neither Anne nor Pete attended university; Anne would later work as a science technician in the secondary school her daughters attended, and Pete would work his way up the executive ladder to become a chartered engineer at Rolls Royce.

Joanne Rowling was born on 31 July 1965 at Cottage Hospital in Yate. Her sister Dianne (Di) was born two years after Joanne. The family moved to the nearby village of Winterbourne on the northern fringe of Bristol when Rowling was four. She enrolled at St Michael's Church of England Primary School in Winterbourne when she was five. They lived near the Potter family – a name Rowling always liked. Anne loved to read and the house was filled with books. Pete read The Wind in the Willows to his daughters, and Anne introduced them to the animals in the Richard Scarry books, which led to Rowling's first attempt at writing with the story Rabbit at age six.

When Rowling was about nine, the family purchased the historic Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales, – another home that was filled with books. Anne gave Jo a copy of The Little White Horse around the time they moved to Church Cottage. The Cottage is next door to St. Luke's Church; Smith writes that the Rowling sisters "never attended Sunday school or services", and Parker writes that the other Rowling family members were not regular churchgoers, but that "Rowling regularly attended services in the church next door". In 1974, Rowling began attending the Church of England school 20 yards (18 m) from her home. Smith writes that her teacher Sylvia Morgan was a "battleaxe" who "struck fear into the hearts of the children" and who seated Rowling in "dunces' row" after she performed poorly on an arithmetic test. In 1975, Rowling joined the Brownies where she could explore a magical world away from the stern Morgan. During this time, she wrote a short story, The Seven Cursed Diamonds. She later described herself during this period as "the epitome of a bookish child – short and squat, thick National Health glasses, living in a world of complete daydreams", which according to Smith, prompted comparisons of her to Hermione Granger, which she does not deny.

Church Cottage, Rowling's childhood home

Rowling’s secondary school was Wyedean School and College. When she was a young teenager, Rowling's great-aunt gave her Hons and Rebels, the autobiography of civil rights activist Jessica Mitford. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and she read all her books. Smith writes that Rowling "craved to play heavy electric guitar", describes her as "intelligent yet shy", says she confronted bullying in secondary school, impressed her teachers with her imagination, and was inspired by her teacher, Lucy Shepherd, according to fellow teacher Dale Neuschwander. Rowling says that learned from Shepherd the importance of being precise.

Anne had a strong influence on her daughter. Early in Rowling's life, the support of her mother instilled the "confidence and enthusiasm to continue to make up stories and share them with others" and her sister Di's "enthusiasm for [her] creativity [was] one of the great encouragements in the life of J. K. Rowling", according to Smith. Anne was a creative and accomplished cook, who insisted on family meals together, and her love of books and reading was an early inspiration on her daughters. Anne helped lead her daughters' Brownie activities, and later, when her daughters were students there, secured a job in the chemistry department at Wyedean. Smith writes that, as the three walked to and from school, they were "more like sisters than mother and daughters" sharing stories about their day. John Nettleship, the head of science at Wyedean, described Anne as "absolutely brilliant, a sparkling character ... very imaginative"; the Rowling's seemed to have a "happy and stable" home, but that would change;

Anne Rowling was diagnosed with a "virulent strain" of multiple sclerosis when she was 35 and Jo was 15, and had to give up her job at Wyedean. Rowling's home life was complicated by her mother's MS diagnosis and a strained relationship with her father. Rowling later would state "home was a difficult place to be". She has said that her teenage years were unhappy, and that "I came from a difficult family. My mother was very ill, and it wasn't the easiest." In 2020, she wrote that her father would have preferred a son, and described herself as having severe obsessive–compulsive disorder in her teens.

Like many teenagers, she became interested in rock music, listening to the Clash, the Smiths, and Siouxsie Sioux, adopting the look of the latter with back-combed hair and black eyeliner, a look that she still sported when beginning university. Steve Eddy, her first secondary school English teacher, 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, presented an "escape from a situation that was becoming more and more oppressive for Joanne" according to Smith. He owned a turquoise Ford Anglia which she says inspired a flying version that appeared in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Rowling took A-levels in English, French and German, achieving two As and a B and was named head girl at Wyedean. She applied to Oxford University in 1982 but was rejected, which Nettleship believed to be a reflection of privilege as she had not attended an independent sixth-form college.

Rowling had always wanted to be a writer, but chose to study French and the classics at the University of Exeter for practical reasons, influenced by her parents who thought job prospects with a French degree, as evidence of bilingualism, would be more likely than an English degree. She later stated that Exeter was not initially what she expected – "to be among lots of similar people – thinking radical thoughts" – but that she enjoyed herself after she met more people like her. According to Parker, "Paraphrasing Fitzgerald, she said that she reacted to Exeter 'not with the rage of the revolutionary but the smoldering hatred of the peasant'." Smith writes that the impression of her at Exeter was of a "flamboyant ... young woman" with "more interest in a social life than an academic one", adding that she lacked ambition and enthusiasm, according to accounts from a fellow student, Yvette Cowles, a tutor, Martin Sorrell, and a professor, Keith Cameron. Rowling recalls doing little work at university, preferring to read Dickens and Tolkien. She earned a BA in French from Exeter graduating in 1987 after a year of study in Paris.

Inspiration and single parenthood

After university, Rowling worked as a researcher and bilingual secretary in London for Amnesty International. In 1990, planning to move with her bofriend to Manchester, she was on a four-hour delayed train trip from Manchester to London when the characters Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger "came fully formed" into her mind. When she reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write.

After moving to Manchester, she worked at the Chamber of Commerce. On 30 December 1990, Rowling's mother Anne died after suffering from MS for ten years. Rowling was writing Harry Potter at the time and had never told her mother about it. There was a rift with her father, and her mother's death heavily affected Rowling's writing.

Rowling moved to Porto to teach English.

An advertisement in The Guardian led Rowling to move to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language. As she taught in the evenings, she wrote during the day, initially while listening to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. After 18 months in Porto, she met the Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar and found that they shared an interest in Jane Austen. They married on 16 October 1992, and their daughter Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford) was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal. Rowling had miscarried in the past.

Rowling and Arantes separated on 17 November 1993. Biographers have suggested that Rowling suffered domestic abuse during her marriage, which she later confirmed. Arantes stated in an article for The Sun in June 2020 that he had slapped her and did not regret it.

In late 1993, with three chapters of Harry Potter in her suitcase, Rowling and her daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near her sister.

Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as a failure. Her marriage had failed, and she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as "liberating" and allowing her to focus on writing. In her 20s, she contemplated suicide. A depression she experienced shortly after her daughter's birth inspired the Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She signed up for welfare benefits, describing her economic status as being "poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless".

Arantes arrived in Scotland in March 1994 seeking both Rowling and their daughter. She obtained an order of restraint against him and filed for divorce in August; Arantes later returned to Portugal. Their divorce was finalised on 26 June 1995. She began a teacher training course in August 1995 at Moray House School of Education, part of the University of Edinburgh, after completing her first novel while living on benefits. She often wrote in cafés, including one owned by her brother-in-law.

Harry Potter

Main article: Harry Potter

Harry Potter is a wizard who lives with the Dursleys, his aunt and uncle. The Dursleys are not wizards—they are Muggles, the wizards' term for non-wizards—but they know magic exists and are opposed to it. On Harry's eleventh birthday, Rubeus Hagrid brings him a letter inviting him to attend Hogwarts. The seven-book series chronicles Harry's seven years at Hogwarts and his adventures with friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. The series begins with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in which Harry foils Lord Voldemort's plan to acquire an elixir of life. Voldemort is Harry's nemesis; his failed attempt to kill Harry as a baby gave Harry his lightning-shaped scar. It ends with Deathly Hallows, in which Voldemort is finally killed after Harry destroys his horcruxes: magical objects that preserve a person's life by storing a portion of their soul.

A California bookshop five minutes before Deathly Hallows was released

Rowling finished the manuscript for Philosopher's Stone, which she wrote on a typewriter, by June 1995. Following an enthusiastic report from Bryony Evans, an early reader, Christopher Little Literary Agency agreed to represent Rowling. Philosopher's Stone was submitted to twelve publishers, all of which rejected the manuscript. Barry Cunningham, who ran the children's literature department at Bloomsbury Publishing, eventually bought it. Nigel Newton, who headed Bloomsbury at the time, decided to go ahead with the manuscript after his eight-year-old daughter finished one chapter and wanted to keep reading. Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, one of Rowling's favourite memories was of Cunningham telling her, "You'll never make any money out of children's books, Jo." In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 500 copies. Rowling received grants in 1996 and 1997 from the Scottish Arts Council to support writing Philosopher's Stone and its sequel, Chamber of Secrets, respectively.

Scholastic Corporation purchased the American rights to Philosopher's Stone for US$105,000 at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in April 1997. Rowling bought an apartment in Edinburgh using money from the sale to Scholastic. Arthur A. Levine, who ran the imprint at Scholastic that published the first book, pushed for a name change. He argued for Harry Potter and the School of Magic and Rowling suggested Sorcerer's Stone as a "compromise".

Scholastic published Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in September 1998. It was not widely reviewed, but publications that did review Sorcerer's Stone spoke well of it. Sorcerer's Stone became a New York Times bestseller by December. The last four Harry Potter books—Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows—each set records as the fastest-selling books in history in either the UK or US. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages. As of February 2018, it had sold more than 500 million copies.

Harry Potter films

Main article: Harry Potter (film series)

Around October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased film rights to the first two novels for a "seven-figure sum". David Heyman managed the sale. Rowling turned down Warner Bros.'s original offer, mainly because it did not prevent Warner Bros. from making Harry Potter films that were not based on her novels. The studio eventually agreed to include such a clause and Rowling sold Warner Bros. an 18-month renewable option to produce films based on the books. The agreement also gave her "some input" on the scripts and a degree of control over merchandising.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, an adaptation of the first Harry Potter book, was released in November 2001. The film series concluded with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which was adapted in two parts; part one was released on 19 November 2010 and part two followed on 15 July 2011. At the 2011 British Academy Film Awards, Rowling, producers David Heyman and David Barron, along with directors David Yates, Mike Newell, and Alfonso Cuarón, collected the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema for the Harry Potter film franchise.

Steve Kloves wrote the screenplays for all but the fifth film. Rowling assisted him in the writing process, ensuring that his scripts did not contradict future Harry Potter novels. She stipulated that cast members should come only from the UK or Ireland; the films have adhered to that rule. She also requested that Coca-Cola, which won rights to tie in its products to the film series, donate to charity and run ads celebrating reading.

In September 2013, Warner Bros. announced an "expanded creative partnership" with Rowling, based on a planned series of films about her character Newt Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The first film, set roughly 70 years before the original series, was released in November 2016. In 2016, it was announced that the series would consist of five films. The second, Crimes of Grindelwald, was released in November 2018. The third, Secrets of Dumbledore, is scheduled to be released on 15 April 2022.

Remarriage and wealth

Rowling acquired the courtesy title of laird of Killiechassie in 2001 when she bought Killiechassie House and its surrounding estate in Perthshire, Scotland. She married Neil Murray, a doctor, in a private ceremony at Killiechassie House on 26 December 2001. Their son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born in 2003, and their daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born in 2005. As of 2020, she also owns a £4.5 million Georgian house in Kensington, and a £2 milllion home in Edinburgh.

In 2004, Forbes named Rowling as the first person to become a US-dollar billionaire by writing books; the 2004 list included 587 billionaires, with Rohling debuting near the bottom of the list at number 552. Rowling denied that she was a billionaire. By 2012, Forbes concluded that Rowling was no longer a billionaire due to high taxes in Britain and having donated an estimated $150 million as of 2012 to charities. The 2021 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £820 million, ranking her as the 196th-richest person in the UK.

Since 2001, Rowling has regularly been ranked among the highest earning people in the world or Britain. She was named the world's highest paid author in 2017 and 2019 by Forbes with net earnings of £72 million ($95 million) and $92 million respectively. Among a Forbes list of the 100 highest paid celebrities in 2018, she was number thirteen.

Adult fiction

Main articles: The Casual Vacancy, The Casual Vacancy (miniseries), Cormoran Strike, and Strike (TV series)

In mid-2011, Rowling left Christopher Little Literary Agency, following her agent Neil Blair to the Blair Partnership. He represented her for the publication of The Casual Vacancy, published on 27 September 2012 by Little, Brown and Company. It is the first book she wrote for adult readers and the first published since the end of the Harry Potter series, Despite mixed reviews, it became a bestseller in the UK within weeks of its release. Casual Vacancy was made into a miniseries of three one-hour episodes, adapted by Sarah Phelps and co-created by the BBC and HBO.

In April 2013, Little Brown published The Cuckoo's Calling, the purported début novel of author Robert Galbraith. The novel, a detective story in which private investigator Cormoran Strike unravels the supposed suicide of a supermodel, initially sold 1,500 copies in hardback. On Twitter, a user called Jude Callegari told India Knight that "Robert Galbraith" was Rowling. Richard Brooks, arts editor of The Sunday Times, eventually contacted Rowling's agent, who confirmed Galbraith was Rowling's pseudonym. Rowling later said she enjoyed working as Robert Galbraith. She took the name from Robert F. Kennedy, a personal hero, and Ella Galbraith, a name she had invented for herself in childhood.

Within days of the revelation, sales of Cuckoo's Calling rose by 4,000%, and Little Brown printed another 140,000 copies to meet demand. It turned out that Judith "Jude" Callegari was the best friend of the wife of Chris Gossage, a partner at Russells Solicitors, Rowling's law firm. Russells apologised for the leak, confirming it was not part of a marketing stunt, and agreed to make a substantial charitable donation to a veteran's group, ending legal action. The Silkworm, the second Cormoran Strike novel, was released in 2014. Career of Evil (October 2015); Lethal White (18 September 2018); and Troubled Blood (September 2020) followed.

In 2017, the BBC released Strike, a television adaptation of the Cormoran Strike novels starring Tom Burke. The series was picked up by HBO for distribution in the United States and Canada.

Later Harry Potter publications

For the material written for Comic Relief and other charities, see § Philanthropy.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre in the West End

Pottermore, a website with information and stories about characters in the Harry Potter universe, launched in 2011. On its release, Pottermore was rooted in the Harry Potter novels, tracing the series's story in an interactive format. Its brand was associated with Rowling: she introduced the site in a video as a shared media environment to which she and Harry Potter fans would contribute. The site was substantially revised in 2015 to resemble an encyclopedia of Harry Potter. Beyond encyclopedia content, the post-2015 Pottermore included promotions for Warner Bros. films including Fantastic Beasts.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child premiered in the West End in May 2016 and on Broadway in July. Rowling, the playwright Jack Thorne, and the director John Tiffany collaborated to some degree in developing the play. Literary critics Anastasia Salter and Mel Stanfill describe Rowling's role in writing the play as "relatively minor", noting that some reports describe her contribution as limited to the story concept. The script was published as a book in July 2016. Reviews were positive overall and the play won several Laurence Olivier Awards in 2017. At its London premiere, Rowling confirmed that she would not write any more Harry Potter books.

Cursed Child follows the friendship between Harry's son Albus and Scorpius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy's son, covering their first four years at Hogwarts. Its setting is closer to contemporary reality than that of the Harry Potter novels. Some fans saw the relationship between Albus and Scorpius as a case of queerbaiting, while others argued that romantic love between two young men was not something the narrative was willing to countenance at all.

Children's stories

Between 26 May 2020 and 10 July 2020, Rowling published an online children's story, The Ickabog. Rowling shelved the story that she had planned to release in 2007, previously referred to as a "political fairytale", and published it instead in daily online installments for children as a response to the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Royalties from the book were donated to charities helping groups strongly impacted by COVID-19.

Rowling's 2021 children's novel, The Christmas Pig, is unconnected to any of Rowling's previous works. It received generally positive reviews and became a bestseller.

Influences

See also: Harry Potter influences and analogues

Rowling describes Jessica Mitford (pictured in 1937) as her greatest influence.

Jane Austen is Rowling's favourite writer.

Rowling has named Jessica Mitford as her greatest influence. She said "Jessica Mitford has been my heroine since I was 14 years old, when I overheard my formidable great-aunt discussing how Mitford had run away at the age of 19 to fight with the Reds in the Spanish Civil War", and claims what inspired her about Mitford was that she was "incurably and instinctively rebellious, brave, adventurous, funny and irreverent, she liked nothing better than a good fight, preferably against a pompous and hypocritical target". As a child, Rowling read Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, Goudge's The Little White Horse, Manxmouse by Paul Gallico, and books by E. Nesbit and Noel Streatfeild. Rowling describes Jane Austen as her "favourite author of all time".

Rowling acknowledges Homer, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare as literary influences. Scholars agree that Harry Potter is heavily influenced by the juvenile fantasy of writers such as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Elizabeth Goudge, Ursula K. Le Guin, Dianna Wynne Jones, and E. Nesbit. According to the critic Beatrice Groves, Harry Potter is also "rooted in the Western literary tradition", including the classics. Commentators also note similarities to the children's stories of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. Rowling expresses admiration for Lewis, in whose writing battles between good and evil are also prominent, but rejects any connection with Dahl.

Earlier works prominently featuring characters who learn to use magic include Le Guin's Earthsea series, in which a school of wizardry also appears, and the Chrestomanci books by Jones. Rowling's setting of a "school of witchcraft and wizardry" departs from the still older tradition of protagonists as apprentices to accomplished magicians, famously exemplified by The Sorcerer's Apprentice: yet this trope does appear in Harry Potter, when Harry receives individual instruction from Remus Lupin and other teachers. Rowling also draws on the tradition of stories set in boarding schools, the most prominent example of which is Thomas Hughes's 1857 volume Tom Brown's School Days.

Literary analysis

Harry Potter series

Main article: Harry Potter

Harry Potter has been defined as a fairy tale, a Bildungsroman, and a work about the characters' education. Its overarching theme is death. Rowling describes "death and bereavement" as a central theme throughout the series. Characters in Harry's life die and he must confront his own death in Deathly Hallows. In Harry's world, death is not binary but mutable, a state that exists in degrees. The series has a fundamentally existential perspective – Harry must obtain and grow into the maturity needed to accept death. Unlike Voldemort, who chose to evade death by separating and hiding his soul in seven parts, Harry's soul is whole and undamaged, nourished by friendship and love.

Like death, truth is mutable in Harry's world. Although he seeks truth about his family, Harry lies to others. Truth is revealed in pieces hiding greater truths within, which Harry must uncover. Each book follows a similar structure in which Harry unravels increasingly painful truths. Michiko Kakutani writes that the series is an epic about personal independence and free will.

Harry Potter is a fantasy about good vs. evil. It derives from the European tradition of the lost prince with intrinsic character, leadership and heroism. Farah Mendlesohn writes that Harry Potter takes place in a conventional political world, reflecting liberalism in the United Kingdom, which is juxtaposed with anachronisms and aristocratic traditions. Harry escapes the loathsome suburbs for a public school, attended by aristocrats and children descended from the oldest magical families in the land, where social order is imposed by the "sorting hat". It is a world steeped in medieval traditions and artifacts similar to those found in Chrétien de Troyes's 12th-century Arthurian romances.

The series has been viewed as a Christian moral fable evoking the psychomachia tradition, in which stand-ins for good and evil fight for supremacy over a person's soul. Like C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, it contains Christian symbolism and allegory. Children's literature critic Joy Farmer sees parallels between Harry and Jesus, writing that "magic is both authors' way of talking about spiritual reality". Two different epitaphs in the seventh volume are passages from the New Testament. There are numerous connections between Harry's story and that of Jesus: Harry is hidden at birth; Minerva McGonagall says of him "every child in our world will know his name"; and Dumbledore tells Harry "your father ... shows himself most plainly when you have need of him". Harry carries the protection of his mother's sacrifice in his blood; Voldemort, who wants Harry's blood and the protection it carries, lacks the understanding that love vanquishes evil just as Christ's love for humanity vanquishes death. Voldemort succumbed to temptation, as did Satan, and is beyond redemption. Harry has divine characteristics whereas Voldemort "has quite literally risen from the dead to become a malevolent figure who seems larger than life".

Rowling excels at characterization, according to English professor Anne Hiebert Alton. Pharr writes that the characters seldom consider the philosophical or ethical implications of their actions directly, even the intellectual Hermione Granger. Moral questions are addressed through emotions rather than intellectual consideration. The critic Lakshmi Chaudhry sees this as an aspect of the series's "moral fuzziness", whereas Mary Pharr writes that the absence of moral clarity derives from Harry Potter's postmodernism – in the postmodern world, there are no moral absolutes. She explains that Harry, as an "epic hero for the postmodern world", does not act with a moral code or religious doctrine in mind. Rather, Harry typically acts through empathy towards others, despite personal risk—a trait that differentiates him from Tom Riddle, who became Voldemort. The same group of characters, friends, and enemies, appear throughout the series with new characters introduced in each book, such as the new Defence of the Dark Arts teacher who appears each year. Snape is the antihero; Malfoy is the rival throughout the series; Ron and Hermione are Harry's best friends from the beginning.

Harry's heroism is imbued with modern attributes such as courage and valiance and based on "sympathy and compassion". Love is a dividing line between Harry and Voldemort: Harry is a hero because he loves others; Voldemort is a villain because he does not. Harry reflects the archetype of the returning prince denied his heritage. In modern fantasy the hero's attributes and birthright "are played out, bit by bit, as the journey unfolds" according to Mendlesohn. The hero is shaped during the journey, but Rowling has imbued Harry with a heroic birthright and innate characteristics such as his niceness. The hero's companions possess qualities that Harry lacks; Hermione's intelligence, Ron's faithfulness, and Hagrid's kind strength.

Magic enhances the ordinary, and renders everyday objects as extraordinary. Eva Oppermann believes that Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia (alternate spaces) applies to Hogwarts. The magical and real worlds are parallel yet separate. Rowling lavishes attention to the smallest detail in the magical world: there are a myriad of spells and charms, owls deliver letters, photographs and paintings present live images, places such as Diagon alley, Hogwarts, Hagrid's cottage, objects such as the sorting hat and fancy wands, to give it veracity. John Pennington disagrees, writing Rowling breaks the fundamental rules of fantasy by adhering too closely to the reality.

Contemporary fiction

With the publication of The Casual Vacancy in 2012, Rowling showed that she cannot be identified as exclusively an author of children's books. The critic Tison Pugh writes that The Casual Vacancy and the subsequent Cormoran Strike crime series published under the pen-name Robert Galbraith show Rowling's proficiency in a range of genres. Rowling considers The Casual Vacancy as tragicomedy although it was promoted as a black comedy. The literary critic Ian Parker describes it in The New Yorker as a "rural comedy of manners", a detailed examination of village life reminiscent of Austen's novels and Middlemarch by George Eliot. The Strike series features Cormoran Strike, a disabled veteran of the War in Afghanistan, who has a prosthetic leg. Army veteran and English professor Peter C. Molin suggests Strike represents disabled veterans ignored in a society that focuses on self-aggrandizing celebrities, and he notes that Rowling supports The Soldier's Charity. Although Strike is an example of hardboiled detective fiction, Strike deviates from the genre's stereotypical unattached loner, as Rowling begins to build romance in the series.

Reception

The Harry Potter series has enjoyed enormous commercial success: it routinely topped bestseller lists, spawned a global media franchise including films and video games, and was translated into at least 60 languages. Neither of Rowling's later works, The Casual Vacancy and the Cormoran Strike series, have been as successful, though their reception was positive. Harry Potter's popularity has been attributed to a number of factors: the nostalgia evoked by the boarding-school story, the endearing nature of Rowling's characters, and the accessibility of her books to a variety of readers. According to Julia Eccleshare, the books are "neither too literary nor too popular, too difficult nor too easy, neither too young nor too old", and hence bridge traditional reading divides.

Due to this perceived accessibility, the series has drawn a less positive response from literary critics: Harold Bloom regards Rowling's prose as poor and her plots as conventional, while A. S. Byatt views the books as reflecting a dumbed-down culture dominated by soap operas and reality television. The plot of the early novels was described by Jack Zipes as a "tedious and grating" repetition: in each book, Harry escapes the Dursleys to visit Hogwarts, where he confronts Lord Voldemort and then heads back successful. Thus, critics argue, Harry Potter does not innovate on established literary forms in language or narrative; nor does it challenge readers' preconceived ideas. This view is not uniformly held: the scholar Philip Nel rejects such critiques as "snobbery" that reacts to the novels' popularity, whereas Mary Pharr argues that Harry Potter's conventionalism is the point: by amalgamating literary forms familiar to her readers, Rowling invites them to "ponder their own ideas".

The Harry Potter series has been described as including complex and varied representations of female characters, but nonetheless ultimately conforming to stereotypical and patriarchal depictions of gender. Gender divides are ostensibly absent in the books: Hogwarts is coeducational, and women hold positions of power in wizarding society. However, this setting obscures the typecasting of female characters and depiction of conventional gender roles that pervade the series. According to scholars Elizabeth Heilman and Trevor Donaldson, the subordination of female characters goes further early in the series. The final three books "showcase richer roles and more powerful females", as the culmination of the growth in agency of characters like Hermione Granger, while other women are shown as leaders. Yet, even particularly capable female characters such as Hermione and Minerva McGonagall are ultimately placed in supporting roles. Girls and women are more frequently depicted as emotional, more often defined by their appearance, and less often given agency in familial settings.

There have been attempts to ban Harry Potter around the world, including, prominently, in the United States, and in the Bible Belt in particular. The series topped the American Library Association's list of most challenged books in the first three years of its publication; in the following years, parents in several US cities launched protests against teaching it in schools. Some Christian critics, particularly Evangelical Christians, have claimed that the novels promotes witchcraft and are harmful to children: similar opposition has been expressed to the film adaptations. Criticism has taken two main forms: allegations that Harry Potter is a pagan text; and claims that it encourages children to oppose authority, derived mainly from Harry's rejection of the Dursleys, his adoptive parents. Author and scholar Amanda Cockrell suggests that Harry Potters popularity, and recent preoccupation with fantasy and the occult among Christian fundamentalists, explains why the series received particular opposition.

Conversely, the Harry Potter books also have a group of vocal religious supporters, who believe that Harry Potter espouses Christian values, or that the Bible does not prohibit the forms of magic described in the series. Christian analyses of the series have argued that it embraces ideals of friendship, loyalty, courage, love, and the temptation of power. After publishing the final volume, Rowling said she intentionally incorporated Christian themes, in particular the idea that love may hold power over death. The claim that the series advocates witchcraft is, according to Farmer, based on a profound misreading. Scholar Em McAvan writes that any evangelical objections to Harry Potter are superficial, based on the existence of magic in the books' setting: they do not attempt to understand the moral messages in the series.

Legacy

Harry Potter has been credited with transforming the landscape of children's literature. Beginning in the 1970s, children's books on the market were generally realistic as opposed to fantastic; in parallel, adult fantasy emerged as a popular genre due to the influence of The Lord of the Rings. The next decade saw an increasing interest in grim, realist themes, with an outflow of fantasy readers and writers to adult works. The commercial success of Harry Potter in 1997 reversed this trend. The scale of its growth had no precedent in the children's market: within four years, it occupied 28% of that field by revenue. Children's literature rose in cultural status, and fantasy became a dominant genre therein. Older works in the genre, including Diana Wynne Jones's Chrestomanci series and Diane Duane's Young Wizards, were reprinted and rose in popularity; some authors re-established their careers. In the following decades, many Harry Potter imitators and subversions grew popular.

Mendlesohn and James state that a crucial comparison to make is to author Enid Blyton, who also wrote in simple language about groups of children, and held a long-term sway over the British children's market. In their view, Rowling has filled the gap left by Blyton. Some critics view this, along with the concurrent success of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, as part of a broader shift in reading tastes: a rejection of literary fiction in favour of plot and adventure. This is reflected in the BBC's 2003 "Big Read" survey of the UK's favourite books, where Pullman and Rowling ranked at number 3 and 5, respectively, with very few British literary classics in the top 10.

Harry Potter's popularity led its publishers to plan elaborate releases and spawned a textual afterlife among fans and forgers. Beginning with the release of Prisoner of Azkaban on 8 July 1999 at 3:45 pm, its publishers coordinated to begin selling the books at a single time globally, introduced security protocols to prevent premature purchases, and required booksellers to sign contracts promising not to sell copies before the appointed time. Driven by the growth of internet access and use around its initial publication, fan fiction about the series proliferated and has spawned a diverse community of readers and writers. While Rowling has supported fan fiction, her statements about characters – for instance, that Harry and Hermione could have been a couple, and that Dumbledore was gay – have complicated her relationship with readers. According to scholars, this shows that modern readers feel a sense of ownership over the text, independent of, and sometimes contradicting, authorial intent.

The books also gained recognition for the unproven assertion of their potential to improve literacy by motivating children to read much more than they otherwise would. Research by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found no increase in reading among children coinciding with the Harry Potter publishing phenomenon, nor was the broader downward trend in reading among Americans arrested during the rise in the popularity of the Harry Potter books.

Legal disputes

Main article: Legal disputes over the Harry Potter series

In the 1990s and 2000s, Rowling was both a plaintiff and defendant in lawsuits alleging copyright infringement. Nancy Stouffer sued Rowling in 1999, alleging that Harry Potter was based on stories she published in 1984. Rowling won in September 2002. Richard Posner describes Stouffer's suit as deeply flawed and notes that the court, finding she had used "forged and altered documents", assessed a $50,000 penalty against her.

With her literary agents and Warner Bros., Rowling has brought legal action against publishers and writers of Harry Potter knockoffs in several countries. In the mid-2000s, Rowling and her publishers obtained a series of injunctions prohibiting public readings of her books before their release dates, which civil liberties and free speech campaigners criticised, claiming the "right to read".

Beginning in 2001, after Rowling sold film rights to Warner Bros., the studio began actions to take Harry Potter fan sites offline unless it determined that they were made by "authentic" fans for innocuous purposes. The Harry Potter fandom was upset and some fans created a group called Defense Against the Dark Arts to help one another respond to the studio. In 2007, with Warner Bros., Rowling started proceedings to prevent a Michigan-based publisher from releasing a book based on content from a fan site called The Harry Potter Lexicon. Rowling had named Lexicon a favourite fan site in 2004. She said at trial that she had already written a Harry Potter encyclopedia. The court held that the Lexicon was not a fair use of Rowling's material and did not constitute a derivative work. The judgment did not close the door completely on publishing the Lexicon, however, and it eventually came out in 2009.

Philanthropy

In 2000, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust to "work to alleviate social deprivation, with a particular emphasis on supporting women, children and young people at risk". Rowling and MEP Emma Nicholson founded Lumos in 2005 (then known as the Children's High Level Group, CHLG). Rowling was named president of the charity Gingerbread (originally One Parent Families) in 2004, after becoming its first ambassador in 2000. Rowling was the second most generous UK donor in 2015 (following singer Elton John), giving about US$14 million through the Volant Charitable Trust and the Lumos Foundation.

In social welfare, Rowling collaborated with Sarah Brown to write a book of children's stories to benefit One Parent Families. To support Children's Voice, later renamed Lumos, Rowling sold a deluxe copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard at auction in late 2007. Amazon bought it for £1.95 million, setting a record price for a contemporary literary work and for children's literature. Rowling later published the book to benefit Lumos, and in 2013, donated the proceeds of nearly £19 million (then about US$30 million) to the organisation. Profits from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, both published in 2001, went to Comic Relief.

Rowling has contributed to support research and treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS), and those affected by COVID-19. Initially a contributor to the Scottish affiliate of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, she withdrew her support in 2009 after drawing attention to internal disputes in the organisation. In 2010, she donated £10 million to found a MS research centre at the University of Edinburgh, named in honour of her mother Anne, who died of MS. She donated six-figure sums from The Ickabog royalites to both Khalsa Aid and the British Asian Trust for coronavirus relief. An inflatable representation of Lord Voldemort and other children's literary characters accompanied Rowling reading from J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan as part of a tribute to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London.

In May 2008, bookseller Waterstones asked Rowling and 12 other writers to compose a short piece on a single A5 postcard, which would then be sold at auction in aid of the charities Dyslexia Action and English PEN. Rowling's contribution was an 800-word Harry Potter prequel that became part of the What's Your Story Postcard Collection. The original manuscript was stolen in 2017.

After her exposure as the true author of The Cuckoo's Calling led to a massive increase in sales, Rowling donated her royalties to the Army Benevolent Fund, saying she had always intended to but never expected the book to be a best-seller.

Views

Politics

See also: Politics of J. K. Rowling and Politics of Harry Potter

In 2008 Rowling donated £1 million to the Labour Party, publicly endorsed Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown over his Conservative challenger David Cameron, and commended Labour's policies on child poverty. That same year, in an interview with the Spanish-language newspaper El País, when asked about the 2008 United States presidential election, she said that the outcome would have a "profound effect on the rest of the world". Regarding who she wanted to see elected, she stated that "it is a pity that Clinton and Obama have to be rivals because both are extraordinary".

In the "Single mother's manifesto" published in The Times in April 2010, Rowling criticised Prime Minister Cameron's plan to encourage married couples to stay together by offering them a £150 annual tax credit. She argued that the proposed tax credit would discriminate against single parents and showed that the Conservative Party was not attuned to their interests.

She opposed the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and donated £1 million to the Better Together anti-independence campaign, explaining her reasons on her website. In June 2016, she campaigned for the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, defining herself as an internationalist, "the mongrel product of this European continent" She expressed concern that "racists and bigots" were directing parts of the Leave campaign, adding in a blog post: "How can a retreat into selfish and insecure individualism be the right response when Europe faces genuine threats, when the bonds that tie us are so powerful, when we have come so far together?"

In 2015, Rowling joined 150 others in signing a letter published in The Guardian espousing cultural engagement with Israel. She expanded her opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, but explained that in her view depriving Israelis of shared culture would not dislodge him.

Religion

See also: Religious debates over the Harry Potter series

Rowling identifies as a Christian. She began attending a Church of Scotland congregation around the time she was writing Harry Potter, and her eldest daughter, Jessica, was christened there. In a 2012 radio interview, Rowling stated that she was a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a province of the Anglican Communion. When asked about whether she believes in God, she admits to struggling with doubt, and that her struggles about her faith play a part in her books, yet she has also said "I believe in God, not magic."

Press

As of 2011, Rowling had taken more than 50 actions against the press. In a 2003 interview, she described herself as "too thin-skinned" with regard to the press. Rowling admits disliking the British tabloid the Daily Mail, which she successfully sued in 2014 for libel about her time as a single mother.

In September 2011, Rowling was named as a "core participant" in the Leveson Inquiry, an investigation into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press. She was one of dozens of celebrities alleged to have been victims of phone hacking. In November 2012, Rowling wrote an op-ed for The Guardian in response to David Cameron's decision not to implement the full recommendations of the Leveson inquiry, titled "I feel duped and angry at David Cameron's reaction to Leveson". In 2014, Rowling reaffirmed her support for "Hacked Off", a campaign supporting the self-regulation of the press, by co-signing a declaration to "[safeguard] the press from political interference while also giving vital protection to the vulnerable" with other British celebrities.

Transgender people

See also: Politics of J. K. Rowling § Transgender people

In December 2019, Rowling tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, a British woman who initially lost her employment tribunal case (Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development) but won on appeal against her former employer, the Center for Global Development, after her contract was not renewed due to her comments about transgender people. Rowling wrote on Twitter, "Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?"

On 6 June 2020, Rowling tweeted criticism of the phrase "people who menstruate", and stated "If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives." Rowling's tweets were criticised by GLAAD, who called them "cruel" and "anti-trans". Some members of the cast of the Harry Potter film series criticised Rowling's views or spoke out in support of trans rights, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Bonnie Wright, and Katie Leung, as did Fantastic Beasts lead actor Eddie Redmayne and the fansites MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron. The actress Noma Dumezweni (who played Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) initially expressed support for Rowling but backtracked following criticism.

On 10 June 2020, Rowling published a 3,600-word essay on her website in response to the criticism. She again wrote that many women consider terms like "people who menstruate" to be demeaning. She said that she was a survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault, and stated that "When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he's a woman ... then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside", while stating that most trans people were vulnerable and deserved protection. Reuters reported that, in the United States, women's rights groups said in 2016 that 200 municipalities which allowed trans people to use women's shelters reported no rise in any violence as a result; they also said that excluding transgender people from facilities consistent with their gender makes them vulnerable to assault. Rowling's essay was criticised by, among others, the children's charity Mermaids (which supports transgender and gender non-conforming children and their parents), Stonewall, GLAAD and the feminist gender theorist Judith Butler. Rowling has been referred to as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) on multiple occasions, though she rejects the label. Rowling has received support from actors Robbie Coltrane and Eddie Izzard, and some feminists such as activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the radical feminist Julie Bindel. The essay was nominated by the BBC for their annual Russell Prize for best writing.

In August 2020, Rowling returned her Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award after Kerry Kennedy released a statement expressing her "profound disappointment" in Rowling's "attacks upon the transgender community", which Kennedy called "inconsistent with the fundamental beliefs and values of RFK Human Rights and ... a repudiation of my father's vision". Rowling stated that she was "deeply saddened" by Kennedy's statement, but maintained that no award would encourage her to "forfeit the right to follow the dictates" of her conscience.

Awards and honours

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by J. K. Rowling

Rowling after receiving an honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen

Rowling has won numerous accolades for the Harry Potter series, including general literature prizes, honours in children's literature and speculative fiction awards. Some scholars feel that its reception exposed a literary prejudice against children's books: for instance, Prisoner of Azkaban was nominated for the Whitbread Book of the Year, but the award body gave it the children's prize instead (worth half the cash amount). The series has won multiple British Book Awards, beginning with the Children's Book of the Year for Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, followed by a shift to the more general Book of the Year for Half-Blood Prince. It received speculative fiction awards such as the Hugo Award for Best Novel for Goblet of Fire.

Rowling's early career awards include the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to children's literature in 2000, and three years later, the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award for Concord. She won the British Book Awards' Author of the Year and Outstanding Achievement prizes over the span of the Harry Potter series. Following the publication of Deathly Hallows, Time named Rowling a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, citing the social, moral, and political inspiration she gave her fans. Two years later, she was recognized as a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy; leading magazine editors then named her the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" the following October. Later awards include the Freedom of the City of London in 2012, and for her services to literature and philanthropy, the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 2017.

Academic bodies have bestowed multiple honours on Rowling. She has received honorary degrees from the University of Aberdeen, University of St Andrews, Dartmouth University, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, University of Exeter (which she attended) and Harvard University, where she spoke at the 2008 commencement ceremony. The same year, Rowling also won the University College Dublin's James Joyce Award. Her other honours include fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL), Royal Society of Edinburgh (HonFRSE), and Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (FRCPE).

Rowling's other works have also received recognition. The fifth volume of the Cormoran Strike series won the British Book Awards' Crime and Thriller category in 2021. At the 2011 British Academy Film Awards, the Harry Potter film series was named an Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema; Rowling shared this honour with producer David Heyman and members of the cast and crew.

Bibliography

Publications by J.K. Rowling

Target/ Type	Series/ Description	Title	Date	Ref.
Young adult fiction	Harry Potter series	1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone	1997-06-26
		2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	1998-07-02
		3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	1999-07-08
		4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	2000-07-08
		5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	2003-06-21
		6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	2005-07-16
		7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	2007-07-21
	Harry Potter- related books	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (supplement to the Harry Potter series)	2001-03-12
		Quidditch Through the Ages (supplement to the Harry Potter series)	2001-03-12
		Harry Potter prequel (short story published in What's Your Story Postcard Collection)	2008-07-01
		The Tales of Beedle the Bard (supplement to the Harry Potter series)	2008-12-04
		Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (story concept for play)	2016-07-30 premier
		Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists	2016-09-06
		Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies	2016-09-06
		Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide	2016-09-06
	Harry Potter- related original screenplays	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them	2016-11-18
		Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald	2018-11-16 premier
Adult fiction		The Casual Vacancy	2012-09-27
	Cormoran Strike series (as Robert Galbraith)	1. The Cuckoo's Calling	2013-04-18
		2. The Silkworm	2014-06-19
		3. Career of Evil	2015-10-20
		4. Lethal White	2018-09-18
		5. Troubled Blood	2020-09-15
Children’s stories		The Ickabog	2020-11-10
		The Christmas Pig	2021-10-12
Non-fiction	Books	Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and Importance of Imagination, illustrated by Joel Holland, Sphere. ISBN 978-1408706787.	2015-04-14
		A love letter to Europe : an outpouring of love and sadness from our writers, thinkers and artists, Coronet (contributor). ISBN 978-1529381108	2019-10-31
	Articles	"The First It Girl: J. K. Rowling reviews Decca: the Letters by Jessica Mitford". Sussman, Peter Y., editor. The Daily Telegraph.	2006-11-26
		"The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination". Harvard Magazine.	2008-06-05
		"Gordon Brown – The 2009 Time 100". Time magazine.	2009-04-30
		"The Single Mother's Manifesto". The Times.	2010-04-14
		"I feel duped and angry at David Cameron's reaction to Leveson". The Guardian.	2012-11-30
		"Isn't it time we left orphanages to fairytales?" The Guardian.	2014-12-17
Book	Foreword/ Introduction	McNeil, Gil and Brown, Sarah, editors. Magic. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0747557463	2002-06-03
		Brown, Gordon. "Ending Child Poverty" in Moving Britain Forward. Selected Speeches 1997–2006. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0747588382	2006-09-25
		Anelli, Melissa. Harry, A History. Pocket Books. ISBN 978-1416554950	2008-11-04

Filmography

J.K. Rowling filmography

Year	Title	Credited as				Notes	Ref.
		Actress	Screenwriter	Producer	Executive producer
2003	The Simpsons	Yes				Voice cameo in "The Regina Monologues"
2010	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1			Yes		Film based on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2011	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2			Yes
2015	The Casual Vacancy				Yes	Television miniseries based on The Casual Vacancy
2016	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them		Yes	Yes		Film inspired by the Harry Potter supplementary book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
2017–present	Strike				Yes	Television series based on Cormoran Strike novels
2018	Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald		Yes	Yes		Film inspired by Harry Potter supplementary book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

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• Thomas, Ebony Elizabeth (2019). The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-0065-0. OCLC 1104862747.
• Tosenberger, Catherine (2008). "Homosexuality at the Online Hogwarts: Harry Potter Slash Fanfiction". Children's Literature. 36: 185–207. doi:10.1353/chl.0.0017.
• Whited, Lana A., ed. (2002). The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-6330-8. OCLC 56424948.
• Zipes, Jack (15 November 2013) [2002]. Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203700211. ISBN 978-0-203-70021-1.

External links

• Official website
• J. K. Rowling on X
• J. K. Rowling on Facebook
• J. K. Rowling at British Council: Literature
• J. K. Rowling at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• J. K. Rowling at IMDb
• Works by J. K. Rowling at Open Library
• Library resources in your library and in other libraries about J.K. Rowling
• Library resources in your library and in other libraries by J.K. Rowling