Who wants to be a millionaire? The tale of the penniless mother who wrote "Harry Potter"
“The winter of our discontent”
In the winter of 1993, a recently divorced mother sat at Nicolson’s Café in Edinburgh, Scotland, feverishly writing a book while her one year old baby daughter slept quietly in a pram nearby. The mother was a former English language teacher who had left her teaching job in Porto, Portugal after going through a difficult divorce. The mother’s name was Joanne Kathleen Rowling and the book would be titled “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”.
In 1995, she finished writing the book and promptly sent the first three chapters of the book to a literary agent. Just as promptly, the manuscript was returned to her, which meant that the agent declined to represent her. Eventually, Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent her and tried to find a publisher for her book. In 1996, Bloomsburyagreed to print 1,000 copies, of which 500 copies were distributed to libraries. Today, one of these copies can fetch princely sums ranging from 16,000 British Sterling Pounds upwards.
The early years of struggle
JK Rowling was the elder of two daughters born in Yate, near Bristol. Her father, Peter James Rowling, was an engineer working for Rolls Royce, Bristol and her mother, Anne Volant, was a technician in the Science Department of a secondary school. Since her early teens, she harbored intentions to become a writer. After obtaining her BA in French and Classics at the University of Exter, she worked briefly for Amnesty International as a research worker. In 1990, she worked out the idea for the first Harry Potter book during the four hour train ride from Manchester to London. On 30 December 1990, her mother died of multiple sclerosis, an inflammatory disease affecting the nerve cells of the brain and the spinal cord. She was devastated and felt the loss keenly.
In 1993, she accepted a post in Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language. There she met a TV journalist named Jorge Arantes and married him on 16 October 1992. The marriage lasted only about a year. Their daughter Jessica was born on 27 July 1993 and the couple separated in November 1993. The following month, she brought her baby back to Edinburgh, Scotland to be near her sister Diana.
“Her back against the wall” years
The new mother faced a desperate situation. Although she was a qualified teacher with working experience, she found that she could not teach in Scotland unless she had obtained her Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE). It would take her at least a year for her to study and obtain this requisite qualification. Wasn’t this an ironical situation? She was a qualified teacher with working experience but was not allowed to work due to lack of qualifications. Here was a single mother, unable to work and with a baby to support. She had to survive on state welfare support to scrape through. Little wonder that she suffered clinical depression and even contemplated suicide!
Her fierce determination to finish “Harry Potter”
Even if she eventually completed her studies and started teaching again, it would not be the end of her troubles. She knew that she had to finish the Harry Potter book as soon as possible. Otherwise, with the demands of the teaching job and the need to look after her baby, it would be impossible to finish the book. The only way to complete the book was to take her daughter Jessica for a walk to induce her to sleep. While her daughter slept, she spent the precious hours at the café to work on her book. It had taken her six years to complete the book from the time she first worked out the initial drafts.
The turning of the tide
But finishing the book was one thing, finding a publisher was another. Although she had found a literary agent who agreed to try to find a publisher for her, twelve publishers rejected her manuscript. Finally, in December 1995, a small publishing firm called Bloomsbury agreed to publish her work just because the owner’s daughter read the manuscript and liked it! The publisher gave her an advance of 1,500 Sterling Pounds which must have seemed a princely sum to her then. By then, her fortunes were turning for the better. The book was published in August 1996. The following year, she received a grant of 8,000 Sterling Pounds from the Scottish Arts Council to continue publishing.