J.K. Rowling: Creator of magic who dazzled the world
LONDON: The creator of a wizarding empire which has dazzled the world, J. K. Rowling struggled through hardship to become an unrivalled children’s author with a global voice.
Rowling once told a beaming crowd of Harvard University graduates how she had initially failed “on an epic scale.”
“An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless,” she said.
Now 20 years since “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was first published, inspiring a generation of young readers — and their parents — it is hard to imagine Rowling before the seven Harry Potter books.
But her longstanding commitment to charitable causes is a testament to the author’s early days, following a French and Classics degree at Exeter University, when she survived on state benefits and struggled to find a publisher.
The Harry Potter series has since been translated into 79 languages and transformed into eight films, with numerous off-shoots including a hit London theater production which will open in New York next year.
The wealth amassed along the way gives Rowling an estimated fortune of £650 million ($825 million), according to The Sunday Times newspaper’s 2017 Rich List.