It is, without a doubt, one of the great rags-to-riches stories of the past two decades: A single mother, living off of welfare, carts her baby down to the local coffee shop in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she writes the first book of what will become the most successful children's series of all time. She goes from poverty to multi-millionaire status all within the span of five years; her novels sell over 400 million copies; are translated into 67 languages; and her iconic creation – Harry James Potter, aka "The Boy Who Lived" – becomes a permanent fixture in households worldwide.
Joanne "Jo" Rowling says she conjured up the idea for Harry Potter in 1990, while on a return train to London. But she didn't actually finish writing The Philosopher's Stone – the story of an eleven-year-old boy who attends Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry – until six years later. During that time, Rowling suffered a series of emotional setbacks that pushed her close to the breaking point: Her mother, Anne, died of multiple sclerosis in December 1990, the impact of which forced Joanne to move from London to Portugal, Spain, to pursue a career as an English teacher. While there, she met and married Jorge Arantes, a journalism student with whom she had a tumultuous relationship. The birth of their daughter, Jessica, in July 1993 only seemed to heighten the tension between them, and following a violent argument in November of that same year, Joanne took the baby and fled back to England. (The couple eventually divorced in August 1994.) Jo's father, Peter, had since re-married and their relationship had become strained, so she moved to Edinburgh to live near her sister. Jobless, penniless, and living on a weekly £69 allowance from social services, she began a daily routine of wandering her neighborhood streets, pushing Jessica in her stroller until the baby fell asleep. Then she would duck into the nearest coffee shop or restaurant and write. She completed Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone in early 1996, and after many rejections from different publishing houses, the book was finally purchased by Barry Cunningham at Bloomsbury, for an advance of £1,500. Scholastic Books followed suit, a mere three days after its publication in Britain, and bid an unprecedented $100,000 to distribute Potter in the United States. The rest, as they say, is history. Rowling would never know poverty again.
