J. K. Rowling was born in England at Chipping Sodbury General Hospital. Her sister, Di, was born two years later. She was the one who listened to Rowling's first efforts at storytelling because Rowling was much bigger than Di and could hold her down.
Their first book was about rabbits because they badly wanted a rabbit. Di can still remember Rowling telling her a story where she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly, the first story Rowling ever wrote, when Rowling was five or six, was about a rabbit named Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee. Ever since Rabbit and Miss Bee, Rowling has wanted to be a writer, though she rarely told anyone because she was afraid they would tell her she didn't have any hope.
A gang of children, including Rowling and her sister used to play together up and down their street in Winterbourne. Two of the gang members were brother and sister whose last name was Potter. Rowling always liked the name, but then she was always keener on her friends last names than her own. “Rowling" is pronounced like "rolling", which used to lead to annoying kid jokes about rolling pins.
When she was nine she and her family moved to Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean. They were finally out in the countryside, which had always been her parents' dream, both being Londoners. Di and Rowling spent most of their time wandering across unsupervised fields and along the River Wye.
The only problem was the fact that Rowling hated her new school. It was a very small, very old-fashioned place where the roll-top desks still had inkwells. Her new teacher, Mrs. Morgan, scared the life out of her. She gave Rowling an arithmetic test on the very first morning, and after a huge effort, Rowling managed to get zero out of ten because she had never done fractions before. So, Mrs. Morgan sat Rowling in the row of desks on her far right. It took Rowling a few days to realize she was in the 'stupid' row. Mrs. Morgan positioned everyone in the class according to how clever she thought they were. The brightest students sat on her left, and everyone she thought was dim sat on the right. Rowling was as far right as you could get without sitting in the playground. By the end of the year, Rowling had been promoted to second left, but at a cost. Mrs. Morgan made Rowling swap seats with her best friend. In one short walk across the room, Rowling became clever, but unpopular.
From Tutshill Primary, Rowling went to Wyedean Comprehensive School. She heard the same rumor about Wyedean that Harry hears from Dudley about Stonewall High in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. However, it wasn't true, or at least, it never happened to Rowling.
Rowling was quiet, freckly, shortsighted and really bad at sports. She's the only person she knows who managed to break their arm playing netball. Her favorite subject was English, but she liked languages, too. She used to tell her equally quiet and studious friends long serial stories at lunchtime. They usually involved all of them doing heroic and daring deeds that they wouldn't have done in real life. She did once have a fight with the toughest girl in her year, but she didn't have a choice the girl started hitting Rowling, and it was hit back or lie down and play dead. For a few days she was quite famous because the girl hadn't managed to flatten Rowling.
Rowling became more outgoing as she got older. For one thing, she started wearing contact lenses, which made her less scared of being hit in the face. She wrote a lot in her teens, but she never showed any of it to her friends; except for funny stories that again featured them all in thinly disguised characters. Rowling was made Head Girl in her final year.
Rowling went to Exeter University straight after school, where she studied French. This was a big mistake. She had listened too hard to her parents, who thought languages would lead to a great career as a bilingual secretary. Unfortunately, Rowling is one of the most disorganized people in the world and, as she later proved, the worst secretary ever. All she ever liked about working in offices was being able to type up stories on the computer while no one was looking. She was never paying attention in meetings because she was usually scribbling bits of her latest stories in the margins of the pad, or choosing excellent names for the characters. This is a problem when you are supposed to be taking the minutes of the meeting.
When Rowling was twenty-six, she gave up on offices completely
and went abroad to teach English as a Foreign Language. Her students used
to make fun of her name. It was like being back in Winterbourne, except
that the Portuguese children said "Rolling Stone" instead of rolling pin.
She loved teaching English, and as she worked afternoons and evenings,
she had mornings free for writing. This was particularly good news as she
had now started her third novel. The first two novels had been abandoned
when Rowling realized how very bad they were. The new book was about a
boy who found out he was a wizard and was sent off to wizard school. When
Rowling came back from Portugal, she had half a suitcase full of papers
covered with stories about Harry Potter. She came to live in Edinburgh
with her very small daughter. She set herself a deadline. She
would finish the Harry novel and try to get it published
before starting work as a French teacher.
It was a year after finishing the book before a publisher
bought it. " The moment when I found out that ‘Harry’ would be published
was one of the best things in my life", quotes Rowling. By this time, Rowling
was working as a French teacher and being serenaded down the corridors
with the first line of the theme from Rawhide (" Rolling, rolling, rolling,
keep those wagons rolling...”). A few months after 'Harry' was published
in Britain, an American publisher bought the rights for enough money to
enable Rowling to give up teaching and write full time, her life's ambition.
The American publisher renamed Harry Potter and the Philosopher'
Stone, to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Rowling has a real rabbit now. She is large and black
and scratches Rowling every time Rowling tries to pick her up. I guess
some things are best left in imagination.