Joanne K. Rowling and her books

Университетский учебно-научно-производственный комплекс

Иркутского государственного лингвистического университета

Городской лингвистический центр

XI научно-практическая конференция

учащихся-исследователей иностранных языков

Joanne K. Rowling and her books

                                                                                  Автор:
                                                                                 Нечаева Эвелина, 8 Б класс МБОУ «СОШ № 10»

         г. Усолье-Сибирское                                                                                                                                                            
руководитель:

                                                               Семенова Людмила Ивановна,

                                                               учитель английского языка I квалификационной

                                                               категории

г. Усолье-Сибирское

2014 год

If you haven't heard of J.K. Rowling, you live under a rock. She is one of the most popular writers of the past few years thanks to her Harry Potter series. But, life wasn't always magical for Joanne Kathleen Rowling. She's had some tough times but she never gave up on her writing.

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling , on 31 July 1965 in Chepstow, Gwent, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965.

J.K. Rowling's favourite subjects in school were English and languages. Rowling studied A Levels in English, French and German, achieving two A's and a B and was Head Girl. As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She wrote her first fairy-tale “Rabbit” when she was about six. Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn't particularly happy. I think it's a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult home life; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father.

Jo left Chepstow for Exeter University, where she earned a French and Classics degree, worked as a secretary and as a teacher. As a postgraduate she moved to London and worked as a researcher at Amnesty International among other jobs. After that Rowling and her then boyfriend decided to move to Manchester. She started writing the Harry Potter series during a delayed Manchester to London King’s Cross train journey, and during the next five years, outlined the plots for each book and began writing the first novel. In December of that year, Rowling's mother died, and Jo was writing her “Harry Potter” at that time. Rowling said this death heavily affected her writing and that she introduced much more detail about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.

Jo then moved to northern Portugal, where she taught English as a foreign language. She married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in October 1992 and gave birth to a daughter Jessica in 1993. When the marriage ended, she and Jessica returned to the UK to live in Edinburgh. In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. Soon after, in 1997, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing. The book was first published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books in June 1997, under the name J.K. Rowling. The “K”, for Kathleen, her paternal grandmother’s name was added at her publisher’s request. 1,000 copies were printed, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. 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. Later Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone was eventually completed. She said that she really liked the idea of creating a place where a child could have power, like Hogwarts (School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.) 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.

The second title in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July 1998 and was No. 1 bestseller for a month after publication, and again Rowling won the Smarties Prize. In 1998, film studio Warner Bros. bought the film rights to two novels by J.K.Rowling. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was published on 8th July 1999 and spent four weeks at No.1 in the UK adult hardback bestseller charts, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running.  January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award.

The fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published on 8th July 2000 with a record first print run of 1 million copies for the UK.

On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray, an anesthetist. Their son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was published in Britain, the USA, Canada and Australia on 21st June 2003 and broke the records set by Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire as the fastest selling book in history. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was published in the UK, US and other English-speaking countries on 16th July 2005 and also achieved record sales. In 2006, Half-Blood Prince received the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards.

The seventh and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was published in the UK, US and other English speaking countries in 2007.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rowling gave credit to her mother for the success of the series saying that "the books are what they are because she died...because I loved her and she died".

In 2012, J.K. Rowling published her first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy (Little Brown), which has now been published in 44 languages.

J.K. Rowling has also written The Cuckoo's Calling (Little Brown), her first crime novel under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, which was published in 2013 and is to be translated into 37 languages. A second Robert Galbraith novel is due to be published in 2014.

J.K. Rowling is currently writing the screen play, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, an original story set in the wizard world, some of which will be familiar to Harry Potter fans. It marks her screenwriting debut and the start of a new film series with Warner Bros.

J.K. Rowling lives in Edinburgh with her husband and three children.

Bibliographical List

1. afisha.mail.ru/person/500479_joanne_murray_rowling/
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_K_Rowling
3. ru.harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Джоан_Роулинг
4. www.biography.com/people/jk-rowling-40998
5. www.c-café.ru/days/bio/36/rowling.php
6. www.jkrowling.com/en_US/#/about-jk-rowling/
7. www.kidzworld.com/article/924-jk-rowling-biography
8. Ролинг Дж.К. Гарри Поттер и философский камень. М., Росмэн, 2002