J.K. Rowling’s rise from poverty to global literary icon

Joanne Rowling was born on 31 July 1965 in Yate, near Bristol, and grew up in a working‑class family that lived next to a family named Potter, a name she later adopted for her famous wizard. After graduating from Exeter University she worked for Amnesty International in London, then taught English in Portugal, where she married and had a daughter before returning to the United Kingdom as a single mother on social‑benefit payments in Edinburgh.

While caring for her infant daughter, Rowling wrote the first chapters of what would become the Harry Potter series in cafés, using the gender‑neutral pen name J.K. Rowling – the “K” honoring her grandmother Kathleen. Bloomsbury Publishing accepted the manuscript in 1996 with a modest £1,500 advance, and the first book, *Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone*, was released in 1997. The seven‑book saga sold over 500 million copies in more than 80 languages, spawned eight blockbuster films, video games, stage productions and theme‑park attractions, and established Rowling as a billionaire author.

Rowling later published crime novels under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, further cementing her status as a major contemporary writer.