[0:05]J.K. Rowling is one of the most successful authors of all time, earning more money and getting more fame than any other author in history. She has gained a huge amount of influence and has built a fan base for not only her series, but herself as well. She has made a series that is beloved by millions. While most know the story of the boy who lived, many don't know the story of the woman behind this magnificent series. In this video, I'm going to explain Rowling's early childhood and the journey that she took to write this series. I'll also touch a bit on what she's doing today, but this video will mostly focus on her early life and the origins of the Harry Potter series.
[0:49]Joanne Rowling was born on July 31st, 1965, to Peter and Anne Rowling. Joanne went by Joe for short, and she shared her birthday with the beloved hero, Harry. Joe was supposed to be a boy, who Peter and Anne were going to name Simon John. When she was born a girl, her parents were very disappointed. They ended up treating her like a boy despite this, dressing her in blue. Then I always had blue. Cause you were the boy, Janna. Yeah. She was the older sister of Diane Rowling, or Die for short. As kids, they often wore similar clothes. While Joe wore blue, her sister wore pink, showing that their parents treated Die like a normal girl, which they did not do for Joe. Joe knew that her parents were disappointed that she wasn't a boy, and when Die was born, she asked them if they were disappointed about her, and they said no. This made Joe go upstairs and cry in her room. The family grew up comfortably, money-wise. Her father was an aircraft engineer, and her mother was a science technician, who would later work at Joe's school. Joe grew up on a suburban street just like Harry. Her house even had a cupboard under the stairs. They lived just outside Bristol and later moved a few miles down the road. Their home was always surrounded by large fields and forests, including the Forest of Dean. The Forest of Dean, of course, popped up a few times in the Harry Potter series. Forest Dean, came here once with mum and dad. And coincidentally, the character that went there often is actually the character that Rowling identifies with the most. Hermione is an exaggeration of me. So Hermione really did come from a very deep place inside me. Joe was always drawn to the forest. She used it as a place of shelter and safety. Trees, the river. Everything. This is a big reason why the Hogwarts grounds has such a vast amount of land dedicated to the Forbidden Forest. It's actually Joe's favorite place on the grounds. Both Joe and Die often heard their parents recount the story of how they met at King's Cross Station. Rowling said that she sees the station as a romantic place because of this. And it's a big reason why it plays such a big part in the series. Where would you say we are? It looks like King's Cross Station. King's Cross, is that right? Joe and Die had a grandmother named Frida, who they greatly disliked. Joe actually based Aunt Marge on Frida. Good of my brother to keep you. You'd have been straight to an orphanage if you'd been dumped on my doorstep. Joe loved to read and was very influenced by the book The Little White Horse. She enjoyed how much detail was in the book with the smallest information, such as what they were eating. This, of course, inspired the many small details spread out through the Harry Potter series. The book also inspired Joe to write her own stories at the early age of six. It was called Rabbit, and it was about a rabbit named Rabbit. She ended up writing a whole series of books about Rabbit, which Joe today admits were very dull. She also had a fascination with trains that she admitted made her a bit nerdy. This is probably one of the reasons why students get to Hogwarts using a train. Joe and Die often got awful haircuts from their parents that Joe jokingly said should have been considered child abuse. This is another event that parallels Harry's story when Vernon would always cut Harry's hair terribly. If only Joe could grow her hair back overnight the way that Harry did. Joe lived four doors down from a boy named Ian Potter, who was a mischievous little boy. His antics greatly parallel the hero from Rowling's story, and she has admitted that she drew inspiration from Ian for Harry's character. Joe and Ian's sisters, Charlotte and Shannon, would often play together, dressing up like witches, while Ian would dress up as a wizard. They would make potions, Joe telling them to get twigs to add to the concoction. Joe would often read poetry to them as well. Around the ages of 12 and 10, Joe and Die were part-time cleaners of their church, St. Luke's, to earn extra pocket money. During the winter, the church would get freezing cold while they were working. Joe was the only member of her family to attend church services on a weekly basis. She was also baptized at St. Luke's when she was 11. Today, Rowling struggles with religion and God. She said she's often doubt-ridden about a lot of things, but does believe in God and also thinks that there's an afterlife. While in secondary school, Joe had a chemistry teacher named John Nettleship. She thought that he was a very unlikable man, and she would later take inspiration from him to make Severus Snape's character. During Rowling's teens, she got into very dramatic, gritty realism that was influenced by Barry Hines. She also got heavily into Jessica Mitford after her aunt lent her a copy of her autobiography. Rowling went on to read all of her books, and actually named her first daughter after the author, Jessica. When Joe got older, she became a little more rebellious, often sticking her head out of her bedroom window to smoke. She would drop her cigarette butts on the ground outside her window, and when her dad asked about them, she said that people from the pub must be throwing them into the garden. While she was young, Rowling always felt like an outsider. One of her best childhood friends, Sean Harris, changed that, however. They both moved when they were nine, so both felt like outsiders, finding comfort in each other. Rowling has said that this was a very important friendship in her life, and has said that Sean was a huge inspiration for Ron. Wicked! When they got older, Sean was the first of Joe's friends to get his driver's license. He drove an old Ford Angler that was turquoise and white. Sound familiar? The two often went on long drives together and would hang out under the bridge to drink and talk about life. Rowling felt that he was always there for her, a trait that's very present in Ron's character. Sean was actually the first person who she discussed a serious ambition to become a writer to. He was also the only person who thought that she was bound for success. This meant more to Rowling than she ever told him at the time. At the age of 15, Joe's mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. At the time, there were no drug treatments for this, and Joe watched as her mother suffered through this illness. While in school, Rowling had a teacher that she disliked intensely on sight. This teacher ended up being the inspiration for Dolores Umbridge. Joe was made head girl during her time in school, which is a big reason why she incorporated head boys and girls at Hogwarts. One of her English professors, Steve Eddie, described her as, "Not exceptional, but one of a group of girls who were bright and quite good at English." Rowling escaped her small-town life by attending the University of Exeter. There, she got a degree in French and Classics. She did what she needed to do to get through school and recalls doing little work. She said that she preferred reading Dickens and Tolkien than trying hard in school. Rowling got one of her short essays published by the university, marking the first time that she ever had her work published. After school, Joe moved to London, working as a bilingual secretary. One day, while she was on a four-hour train delay, the idea for Harry Potter came into her head. She said it was the most physical rush of excitement that she had ever felt. And I could see Harry very clearly. This scrawny little boy. She had nothing to write her thoughts down. For four hours, she had all of these ideas building up in her head. As soon as she got home, she wrote all of her ideas down, and she decided that she wanted to write a book. After six months of writing, she had written the first chapter 155 different ways, but most of them gave away too much. She said that if you put them all together, you would probably get the whole plot. After six months of working on the series, Joe's mother passed away, finally losing her battle with her illness. She died never knowing about Harry Potter or her daughter's enormous success. To this day, Joe's biggest regret was that she didn't keep her mother on the phone longer the last time that she spoke to her. After her mother died, the essential story of the series didn't change, but everything deepened and darkened. At her mother's funeral, Joe's father didn't want Joe or Die to see her body. Joe really wanted to see it and didn't care how she looked, because she thought it would make it easier. She deeply regrets following her father's wishes. Afterwards, both Joe and Die found their father very difficult. Joe had always had a weird relationship with her father, and she said that it was far from ideal. She said she was very frightened of him, but tried desperately to get his approval and make him happy. This eventually came to a stop when she realized that she couldn't do this anymore. Ties were eventually cut between Joe and her father. One of the main reasons for this was how unsettling it was that he moved in so quickly with his secretary after his wife's death. One huge reason why Harry has so many idealized father figures is because of Joe's difficult relationship with her own father. After this, Joe decided to move to Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. There, she met and married Jorge Arantes, who was a television journalist. The two decided that they wanted a child, and on their first attempt, Rowling had a miscarriage that greatly affected her. Eventually, she successfully gave birth to their daughter, who they named Jessica, who, as I said before, was named after one of Joe's favorite authors. The marriage turned out to be far from perfect. There was some domestic abuse involved, and Arantes today has admitted to slapping her very hard. One day, he pushed her out of the house without Jessica, and Rowling returned the next day with the cop. He was forced to hand Jessica over, and Joe, who had had enough after two years of their marriage, left and went to Britain. Rowling sneakily put her failed marriage in Harry Potter, when Trelawney says to Lavender Brown, "That thing you are dreading, it will happen on Friday the 16th of October." This is the date of Rowling and Arantes's wedding. Joe knew that she had to rebuild both herself and Jessica a new life, but she wasn't quite sure how. She was on the verge of homelessness and was relying entirely on benefits. She skipped meals to ensure that her daughter was fed. One month, she couldn't even afford her own rent and had to borrow money from a friend. At this point, she had fallen into a deep depression. It got so bad that she came to a point where she thought something bad would happen to Jessica. The one good thing in her life, just because everything else had gone wrong. "It's a numbness, a coldness, and an inability to believe that you will feel happy again, or that you could feel lighthearted again. All the color drained out of life." This turned out to be the main inspiration for the creatures that she created in Harry Potter, called Dementors. Please describe the attack. Everything went cold. As though all the happiness had gone from the world. Chocolate is even one of the few cures to make you feel better after an attack, a common cure for depression. Rowling eventually got into a routine. The only way to make Jessica fall asleep was to keep her moving, so Joe pushed her in a carriage until she fell asleep. And once she did, she went into the nearest cafe and began writing. Her favorite cafe was called Nicholson's, which was owned by her brother-in-law. She wrote huge parts of the book in this cafe. Joe wished to be published and wished more than anything in the world to be a writer. It took her five years from when she thought of the idea on the train to when she finished the first book. Joe wanted to be a writer where the author knew every last detail of everything mentioned in the books. She did this for the audience, but partly for herself as well. So this is the name of everyone in Harry's year. And all these little symbols mean what house they're in, how magical they are, what their parentage is. She also made drawings of characters and drawings of how things worked, just so she knew what it looked like. She also wrote the final chapter of the final book. This was her way of telling herself that she would get there one day. It was a way of saying to myself, well you will get here, you will get to book seven one day. The absence of any meaningful relationship with her father, and the slow loss of her mother, were two of the most important influences in Joe's writing. The chapter with the Mirror of Erised makes this very clear.
[12:26]When describing this scene, she said, "There's never enough time." Which not only applied to Harry, but herself as well. Which goes back even further to her greatest regret of not having enough time on the phone with her mother, the last time that she spoke to her. When she finally finished the first book, she sent her manuscript into many different publishing companies. Rowling believed in the story and thought that she gave it her best shot. Despite this, however, many publishing companies threw it on the rejection pile. Bloomsbury Publishing eventually picked it up after Rowling told them the whole story that the books would tell. And she asked how they felt about sequels. After hearing the story and how all seven books would go, Bloomsbury was on board for both the first book and the six sequels. Joe was ecstatic. Her lifetime ambition of being put on the shelf finally came true. The book slowly started to get more and more popular. When the book finally made it to America, there was a bidding war between the American publishing companies. Scholastic ultimately came out on top, paying over $105,000. This changed everything for Joe. She could now go full-time as a writer, which is all that she ever wanted. After finishing the second book, she decided to dedicate it to her long-time friend, Sean. When Joe released the third book in 1999, she went from successful writer to international superstar. She was the first author to ever have the top three spots on New York Times best seller list. With this fame, however, came many problems as well. Journalists began banging on her front door. Jessica was being scrutinized and hounded by journalists because Joe was her mother. And worst of all, Joe's dad had journalists at his door, questioning him on why his daughter hates him. This deeply hurt him, and made Joe and her father's relationship even more complicated. Sean even had reporters knocking at his door, digging for information on Joe. Rowling was also attacked by Christian groups, claiming that her books were promoting the religion of witchcraft. Some parents in South Carolina even tried to get the books banned from the classrooms. People even went as far to say that she herself was practicing witchcraft and was getting death threats because of it.
[14:30]One mother wrote to Joe, saying that a writer of her ability should be able to make the ending of the books less dark and disturbing. The mother then proceeded to say that she would be back in touch if she did not make the sequels more uplifting. Joe snapped and wrote back, telling her not to read the rest of the books because she was writing it how she wanted. Joe felt uncomfortable by being followed by paparazzi. The moment that stands out the most to her was when photographers were taking pictures of her on the beach. When Joe released the fourth book of the series in 2000, it was another hit. Her book signings began to resemble concerts with thousands of people attending. Joe struggled with public appearances and speeches and didn't like this part of the fame. She was especially terrified to do book readings in front of a large crowd. I am delighted and terrified to be here. Around this time, Joe met Neil Murray, and the two got married in 2001. Rowling was eventually approached to make her books into films, and many production companies reached out. Joe was very skeptical at first and was very picky. She eventually agreed to let Warner Brothers create the series. She worked closely with the screenwriter Steve Kloves, and the two worked out a script that worked for both of them. When Joe saw the set for Diagon Alley, she began to cry because it was so perfect. Joe and Neil eventually had two kids, McKenzie and David. The parents worked hard to keep their children out of the spotlight, actually pressing charges against the press for publishing pictures of their children. A case that they unfortunately lost. Rowling went back to work on her beloved series, writing the fifth installment. Many fans thought that she had writer's block because there was a gap of almost three years since the last book was released, whereas the others came out a year apart. Rowling denied this and said it was because it was the longest book of the series and had many details that would lead to the final book. So she needed more time to work those plot points out. When she released the Order of the Phoenix in 2003, it sold 5 million copies in 24 hours, making it the fastest selling book of all time. The Half-Blood Prince was released two years later. It once again broke all sales records, selling 9 million copies in the first 24 hours. The Half-Blood Prince also received the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards. Rowling then began working on the seventh and final book of the series. She kept all details top secret. Toward the end of the writing process, she locked herself in a hotel room to finish the book. Yeah. I think I finished.
[16:51]Thank you. It took Rowling 17 years to write the series from start to finish. Joe personally loved the seventh book, which she admitted was rarely the case when judging her own work. When she released the Deathly Hallows, it once again broke all records, selling 11 million copies in just 24 hours. After Joe finished the series, she immersed herself in family life, raising her kids, David and McKenzie, as well as Jessica. She said that she is now happier than she's ever been in her life. Rowling donates her vast amount of money to many charitable causes, but most of all, to multiple sclerosis research, the disease that killed her mother. Although Rowling said that she was done with Harry Potter, she continues to run her website, Pottermore, releasing new information on the Wizarding World pretty often. She's also writing the screenplays for the new Fantastic Beasts films, which are prequels to the original series. Rowling struggled through a lot during her life. She's admitted that the series was one giant attempt to reclaim a childhood. Writing was her escape from the real world, her depression, her failed marriage, the press, and so much more. What's her dream of happiness? Happy family. Both she and Harry got the happy ending that they deserved with the magnificent family. The stories we love best do live in us forever. So, whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.
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