Otázka: J. K. Rowling
Jazyk: Angličtina
Přidal(a): Niki
J. K. Rowling
Joanne „Jo“ Rowling is a British novelist, best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, but even a novel for adults „The Casual Vacancy“. Although she writes under the nick name „J. K. Rowling“, her middle name isn’t Kathleen as lot of people think, she doesn’t have a middle name, she only has surname after her first husband, but she doesn’t want to use it. She first published her first Harry Potter book simply as „Joanne Rowling“. But her editor thought that young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, so he asked her to use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the name of her grandmother „Kathleen“.
Rowling was born on 31st July 1965 in Yate in England, near the Bristol. Her father was Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer. Her mother Anne Rowling was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King’s Cross Station what I found interesting because King’s Cross Station is really important place in her Harry Potter books. She always says that her childhood was the best inspiration for her books, for example headmaster of her primary school has been inspiration for Albus Dumbledor, headmaster of Hogwarts.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she usually then read to her younger sister. The first story she ever wrote when she 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. She wrote it for her sister, because she had measles at this time.
When she was a young teenager, her great aunt gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford’s autobiography and Mitford became Rowling’s favourite author, she lately read all of her books. She had a difficult adolescence. Her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father. Rowling says that Hermione, know-it-all Harry Potter character, is a caricature of her when she was eleven and she is not particularly proud of. Rowling was really good in English, she took the entrance exams for Oxford University but she was not accepted. She started to study French and she she also went to one-year-trip to Paris. Then she went back to England and she started to work mainly for Amnesty International.
After her mother died, she moved to Manchestr with her boyfriend, but they broke up early after that. She got the idea of a young boy attending a school of magic while she was on a trip from Manchester to London and her life was totaly broken. She wrote first and the last chapter, but she did’t show it to anybody. She decided to move to Porto in Portugal and she started to teach English here. She met Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar. She married him a they have had a babygirl, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes. But shortly after her birth, Jorge started to abuse Joanne and also her daughter. So Joanne decided to move to her sister in Edinburgh inScotland. She had already written three chapters of Harry Potter and Philosopher’s Stone in her suitcase. Rowling says that it was the worst time of her life, she was divorced, she didn’t have a job and she had a little baby. During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, and contemplated suicide. It was the feeling of her illness which brought her the idea of Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book.
One day her sister found the first three chapters, she read it and she really liked it. After she read the very last chapter that Rowling had already written too, she started to cry and suggest Rowling to publish it. Because writing made her feel better, she continued with Philosopher’s stone. The book was first published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books in June 1997. Unexpected success followed, she became multimilionaire and now she is one of the richest women in the world. She wrote seven books about Harry Potter : Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She also wrote three additional books : Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Quidditch Through The Ages and The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Harry Potter
Now let me speak about many times mentioned Harry Potter story. As I said, it is a story about an orphan, who lives with her aunt, uncle and mean cousin. He thinks, that his parents died in a car crash. But when he had his eleventh birthday, he got a letter, which says that he is a wizard and he is accepted by Hogwarts, the school of magic for young witches and wizards. He meets Hagrid, a half-giant and half-human who is the Keeper of Keys and Grounds of Hogwarts, he told him that his parents were killed by Lord Voldemort – dark wizard, who wants to rule the whole world and killed wizards whose blood is not clear (it means that their parents are not wizards).
Harry goes to Hogwarts and he meets his two best friends – Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. He studies at Hogwarts for seven years and every year he fights against the Dark lord. It would take a lot of time to talk about each book, because te story is really comprehensive. But in the seventh book he finally kills Voldemort, even though many of people he loves die. He married Ron’s sister Ginny, Hermiony married Ron and as J.K.Rowling says, they lived happily ever after, until the very end.
J. K. Rowling helped a lot of children to start reading in these days of television and the internet.
