February 2010 Guest Editor Robert Muchamore on Harry Potter.
Occasionally writers get to leave the house. Often it’s some kind of party. Chatter, wine, nibbles. At one of these I was accosted in the toilets by an elderly and renowned children’s author.
‘You young buggers!’ he blasted. ‘It’s so easy for you lot now. I toiled for years. Won every major award and still didn’t make a bean.’
Before Harry Potter, children’s fiction was in the doldrums.
Publishers were convinced that TV spin-offs and novelty items were the only things that would sell. J.K. Rowling proved them wrong and created a market in which a new generation of children’s writers such as me have been able to thrive.
A boxed set containing six Harry Potter titles - "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince".
J. K. (Jo) Rowling was born in Chipping Sodbury in the UK in 1965. She attended the University of Exeter in Devon where she studied French. Her parents hoped that by studying languages, she would enjoy a great career as a bilingual secretary. But as Jo recalls, 'I am one of the most disorganised people in the world and, as I later proved, the worst secretary ever.' She claims that she never paid much attention in meetings because she was too busy scribbling down ideas.
When she was 26, she went to Portugal to teach English, which she really enjoyed. Working afternoons and evenings, she had mornings free to write. When she returned to the UK, Jo had a suitcase full of stories about Harry Potter. In 1996, one year after finishing the book, Bloomsbury bought Jo's first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. A few months after 'Harry' was accepted for publication in Britain, an American publisher bought the rights for enough money to enable Jo to write full time.
Click here to see the new Harry Potter books site with illustrations by Jonny Duddle.
