Harry Potter books

Harry Potter thinks he is an ordinary boy – until he is rescued by a beetle eyed giant of a man, enrols at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, learns to play Quidditch and does battle in a deadly duel. All because Harry Potter is a wizard! Follow the adventures of Harry Potter as he discovers the magical, the dangerous, the unpredictable world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Joanne “Jo” Murray OBE, née Rowling, (born 31 July 1965), who writes under the pen name, J. K. Rowling, is a British author, best known as the creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series, the idea for which was conceived whilst on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies.

As a child, Rowling enjoyed writing fantasy stories, which she often read to her sister. “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,” she recalls, “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.”

Although she writes under the pen name “J. K. Rowling”, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply “Joanne Rowling”. Before publishing her first book, her publisher Bloomsbury feared that the target audience of young boys might be reluctant to buy books written by a female author. It requested that Rowling use two initials, rather than reveal her first name. As she had no middle name, she chose K. for Kathleen as the second initial of her pseudonym, from her paternal grandmother. The name Kathleen has never been part of her real name. Following her marriage, her legal name is Joanne Murray, which she uses when conducting her personal business. She calls herself “Jo” and says, “No one ever called me ‘Joanne’ when I was young, unless they were angry.”

Aside from writing the 7 Harry Potter novels, Rowling is perhaps equally famous for her “rags to riches” life story, in which she progressed from living on welfare to multi-millionaire status within five years. The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling’s fortune at £560 million (8 million), ranking her as the twelfth richest woman in Britain. Forbes ranked Rowling as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007, and Time magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fandom. She has become a notable philanthropist, supporting such charities as Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, and the Children’s High Level Group.

In 1990, 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 fully formed” into her mind. “I really don’t know where the idea came from”, she told The Boston Globe, “It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head.” When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.

In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print-run of 1000 copies, five hundred of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000. Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year, and later, the Children’s Book Award. Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July, 1998. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher’s Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: a change Rowling claims she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.

Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated £7 billion ( billion), and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.