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This is about the famous person that manages to keep her personal life very private. She had a hard time getting to where she is today but her talent was luckily for us. This is about J.K. Rowling, everybody knows her now because of her skillfully created Wizarding World but what was her life like before the fame. When she came up for the idea of a book that went on to change her life, that was back in 1990 and the idea came to her while she was waiting for a train that would take her from Manchester to London.
1. Harry Potter Books Are The Best Selling Books In History
Can you guess how many books of the Harry Potter series have been sold worldwide? The publisher in the UK, Bloomsbury says that they sold more than 500 million copies worldwide which makes them the biggest selling series ever. When reaching this number, they took into account all of these 7 Harry Potter books as well as the titles that came after the series as companion books, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Quidditch Through The Ages, and The Tales of Beedle The Bard. This fantastic figure makes J.K. Rowling series compete with Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote.
2. She Also Writes Under A Pseudonym
Being as famous as J.K. Rowling can be sometimes a burden. People have very high expectations of you and releasing books on another genre, different from the series that brought you fame, can be difficult and gain mixed reviews from Harry Potter fans. J.K. Rowling decided to use a pseudonym when she decided to release her crime novels. She wanted the audience to be neutral to her new books. She released the book, Cuckoo’s calling under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith in April of 2013. Robert Galbraith was supposedly a British veteran but she uncovered her real identity only three months after the books release, when a friend of one of her solicitors tweeted about her secret identity.
3.She’s Extremely Involved In Charity Work And Humanitarian Causes
Even if now, she has all the money she could want. Rowling was at one point before her books were published, struggling with money. She lived off of welfare as it was quite a challenge to get someone to publish her Harry Potter series. With this experience still in the back of her mind, she now donates a large part of her income to charity.
Rowling founded the Boland Charitable Trust in 2000 and the trust has an annual budget of 6.79 million dollars. They use their funds to support people dealing with poverty but they also donate it to organizations that deal with MS research. She could no longer be featured in billionaire top lists as she’s no longer a billionaire because she donated so much for money to charity about 16 percent of her income in 2011, that amounts to 160 million dollars that she gave to charity.
4. She Had A Lot Say When It Comes To How The Harry Movies Were Shot And Directed
The famous author kept a very close involvement in the movie adaptation of her books. One of her main demands was that the cast should be British but she was open to including other nationalities such as the Irish Richard Harris who played Dumbledore, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire there was cast from France and Eastern Europe to go along with a book description of the characters.
After setting her rules clean, she made the decision to sell Warner Brothers the rights to her first four books of the Harry Potter series for 2 million dollars. Steven Spielberg who was in negotiations to direct the first movie, said, he pictured it as an animation. I don’t know how that would have turned out but I am glad that Rowling’s made sure the movies were kept very close to the books.
5. She Is The First Writer To Become A Billionaire, Now Has A Net Worth of $700 Million
Through her best-selling series, movie adaptations, and lately screenwriting, J.K. Rowling managed to take her net worth to an impressive 700 million dollars. She do it with her Wizarding World seven book series added up to an astonishing number of four hundred and fifty million copies sold worldwide. The movie adaptation of the series brought her roughly 7.7 million dollars and the theme parks in California Japan and Florida also bring her a steady income. To add to all of this, the success of her latest stage show was overwhelming, Harry Potter and the cursed child debuted on West End with record sales 175 thousand tickets were sold in the first 24 hours.
6. Christians Have Banned Harry Potter Because They Promote Witchcraft
There have been numerous religious debates over the famous Wizarding World book series and some went as far as saying that the novel’s actually have occult satanic references and sub texts. As some Catholic or Orthodox Christians, Protestants, and Muslims went on to say the series promotes witchcraft. The fans are supporting the world of Harry Potter saying that it’s a matter of fantasy and fairy tales much more than any occult subtext. Rowling actually declared, she is a Christian and if you pay close attention you can note the Christian references in the last book of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
7. Her Father Sold His First Signed Copy Of Harry Potter And She Never Talked To Him Again
Family drama is everywhere and our famous writer here had a falling out with her father Peter Rowling after he decided to sell a collection of signed and quite rare Harry Potter books. He did this to cover his 100,000 pounds of debt, he was in after he lost his burger van business. He claims Joanne never offer to help him. Then said, “It’s a heartbreaking situation, I fear of lost my daughter, I can only hope Joanne will one day come to understand why I did it.” This happened nine years ago and fortunately they have since reconciled and they’re on good terms.
8. She Likes To Attack Trump Via Twitter And Social Media Every Chance She Gets
She doesn’t seem to be much of a trump supporter as she never misses the chance to attack the President on social media. The latest swipe she’s taken at him was a tweet of a shot that showed, the crowd that gathered for the royal wedding next to a shot of the crowd that was present at the president’s inauguration. Her next caption was love is greater than hate.
Another shot she took a Trump involved the president’s obviously enormous signature. She went on to tweet a result from a graphology website which depicted the owner of the signature as a quote, arrogant person, conceded, haughty who needs to exhibit compliments and recognitions, tyrant tendencies, exhibitionist, and phony personality that may be megalomaniac was a lack of critical sense. But, it sounds kind of accurate
9. Hermione Is Actually Inspired By Her Own Personality
Rowling created the character of Hermione Granger to resemble her younger self. She first named the character Puckle, but later on changed her mind when she first saw character called Hermione in Shakespeare’s a Winter’s Tale. Hermione is definitely one of a kind, a smart and ambitious girl who doesn’t lack in beauty or courage.
J.K. feels that her characters are like her children as they each have a little piece of her. They grow and evolve along the story-line into complex and distinct beings and she feels she just cannot pick one as her favorite. We couldn’t pick one either because even the evil characters in her novels make you want to like them at least a little bit sometimes.
10. She Bought A 6.5 Million Pounds House In Tasmania, Australia
Rowling seems to be quite a fan of the Australian climate as she owns a few properties in Tasmania. Her latest purchase is one of historical value and the price she paid for it was quite steep. The house is actually a Georgian mansion that was built in 1839. It also includes a large piece of land with an 856 hectare farm. She chose well as the mansion also has a gym, tennis court, stables and, seven bedrooms. She can have a whole party at her newly purchased vacation home in Australia, and with her making 1 million pounds every three days, this begins to look like quite a bargain.
11. J.K. Rowling Likes To Play Minecraft
With her status and fortune, you would say that J.K. Rowling probably has some posh hobbies, but she still keeps her down-to-earth manner in her passions. She loves to play Minecraft as she once tweeted “I have an 11 year old son. Of course, I play Minecraft. Authors frequently go to gaming as a distraction from their work and also as a source of inspiration.” She also listed the news and research reading as activities that both distract and inspire her.
Having your mind always in your characters minds can be exhausting that’s where the world-building game comes in handy, providing her some time off from the Wizarding World and also giving her new ideas on how to build new story-lines. This is actually a tradition with authors, many choose the games that relax their minds when writing proves to be stressful or when inspiration lacks.
12. She Has A Multiple Decorations And Awards
Joanne Rowling is an awarded writer as she received many distinctions in her writing career so far. She received honorary distinctions from a number of universities in Ireland and England as well as Harvard University where she gave a commencement speech in 2008. She’s a part of the Order of the Companions of honour which is a distinction created especially for a limited number of deserving individuals. The award has a lot of history as it was created by king George v in 1917.
She also received the award for the most excellent Order of the British Empire which rewards outstanding contributions to science and arts as well as work done by organizations in the charity and welfare area. J.K. is a part of the Royal Society of literature and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
13. Most Spells In Harry Potter Come From Latin Words
You may have learned by now that J.K. Rowling draws a lot of her inspiration from the classics. She is one author that definitely made use of her Latin classes and university. She used Latin words to make up most of the spells and incantations mentioned in the Harry Potter series and if you search for the meaning of the spells, you’ll find the words actually describe the effects of certain spells. For example., the spell Crucio translates to I torture. This being a spell that is supposedly used in the cruciatus curse to torture victims and drain information they don’t want to give freely.
Expel armas is a disarming spell that is actually made up of two Latin words Expelere which means to force out and Arma which means weapon
14. She Made An Apperance In The Simpsons As Herself
Author cameos in their own book adaptations are quite a thing but J.K. made an appearance on The Simpsons instead. The episode is called The Regina Monologues and her scene was one in which she’s talking to Lisa. Rowling is a real fan of the show as she already said, “I love the Simpsons because of the detail. There are so many layers and it works for kids and adults.”
She was very amused and glad they did a Harry Potter themed segment in tree-house of horror 12. The episode depicts an adventure of Lisa and Bart where they go to Wizarding school. It must be quite a thrill to get your books to be featured on one of your all-time favorite shows.
15. Quidditch Has Become An Actual Sport
Quidditch is the famous sport J.K. invented in the Wizarding World. It is a quite violent and dangerous sport as its depicted in the books and portrayed in the movies. Fans of the series adapted the sport as a a life version, real-life Quidditch is played in teams of seven players. There are two teams and the players mount on broomsticks to go at each other. The playing field is one that resembles the size of a hockey rink. People go as far as naming the real-life game as Muggle Quidditch to have the clear distinction from the original Wizarding game. As muggles might not be able to fly on broomsticks but playing a pretend Quidditch match still sounds like a lot of fun.
16. She Shares Her Birthday With Harry Potter, 31st July
This one might be a bit of a surprise, the author decided to share her birthday with her most famous character Harry Potter. On July 31st, Rowling celebrates her own birthday but also the birthday of her beloved Harry Potter who’ll be turning 38 has J.K. turns 53. Maybe, she decided to give her own birthday to Harry Potter in order to mark the deep connection she has with her character, but now she has two reasons to celebrate on the last day of July every year. Authors frequently use important dates from their own lives in their literary creations as it gives them a deeper connection to the fictional world or because the certain event in their real lives had a strong impact on the creation of the novel.
