How J.K.Rowling created Harry Potter
while traveling on a train
J.K.Rowling (also called Jo by her good friends) was sitting on a train traveling from Manchester to London’s King’s Cross Station. Out of nowhere, the idea of a boy going to a wizarding school struck her. As she watched the trees rush past her window, the Hogwarts castle loomed large in her imagination. It was one of the rare days in her life when she did not carry a pen. With no way to jot down her thoughts, Jo sat back and let her imagination run wild. She began to imagine details of the Hogwarts school and how kids would get there on a train - the Hogwarts Express! Three main characters began to take shape in her mind - Ron Weasley, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. The train kept chugging along.
This week’s newsletter is not a news story, but about a famous children’s author. She not only took the world by storm, but was also responsible for bringing back an entire generation of readers to love books!
Also, on our kids podcast on current affairs, there are a few interesting episodes styled like the 20-questions game. Check them out!
From that moment in the train when the story of Harry Potter came to her head, Jo was very clear that Harry’s story would take seven books to narrate. From the very beginning, she knew that each book was going to be about each year in the wizarding school. She clearly sketched out the details of each of the seven books, beginning with Harry going to Hogwarts and ending with how he would fight a great evil.
Trivia time: J.K.Rowling was born on the 31st of July. Harry Potter fans, you do notice the coincidence, don’t you? Harry’s birthday falls on the same date.
Why wizards and magic?
One of Jo’s neighbours from her childhood told a journalist that when all the kids would get together, Jo mostly loved to play ‘pretend play’ with wizard and witch styled games. The idea of a wizarding world and a ‘muggle’ world may have long existed in her imagination, right from her childhood years. She was also your quintessential bookworm with a pair of spectacles!
Later, when Jo grew up and went to college, she studied The Classics. Students who learnt this subject, often had to master Latin and Greek works of literature. This subject came in very handy when she was writing the Harry Potter book series. The spells she created had Latin and Greek roots. Here are a few fascinating examples -
Nox - this is Latin for ‘night’. It also has origins in Greek mythology. ‘Nyx’ is the name for the Greek goddess of night (she was so feared that even the mighty Zeus was afraid of her sometimes).
Expecto Patronum (the patronus charm) - translated in Latin means - I expect a guardian. (In ancient Rome, patronus meant a protector)
Petrificus Totalus (the body binding spell) - petra in Greek means a rock; ficus in Latin means ‘making’; totalus means ‘complete’. This translates to ‘make him/her into a total rock’. Remember Neville Longbottom who was often at the receiving end of this curse in the first book?
Expelliarmus (the disarming spell) - expel in Latin means ‘to drive out’; ‘armus’ in ancient Latin meant the shoulder joints and later it changed to become ‘arma’ meaning weapon. So expelliarmus translates to ‘drive out the weapon in your arm’. Who can forget this legendary spell that helps Harry defeat Voldemort in the end.
Lumos - comes from the Latin word ‘lumen’ which means light; ‘os’ means ‘to have’. Translating to - ‘to have light’.
The first book took 5 years to write
Jo kept writing parts of the first story on paper. She did not type out her story on Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Instead she wrote them in longhand (that’s writing using full words and not short forms; and in cursive writing). She had a huge pile of papers collecting in her suitcase.
Around the time she began to write the first book, she left England and went to Portugal to work. While in Portugal, she got married and had a daughter (Jessica). Things did not work out well in her marriage and she moved back to the UK when her daughter was still an infant. Jo’s sister was a big support to her when she came to live in Edinburgh (Scotland). But she had little or no money and had to figure out what she wanted to do for a living, very soon. She considered becoming a teacher. But before she went to full-time teaching, she wanted to finish writing the first book in the Harry Potter series. Many a day, she would wheel little Jessica in her pram and head to a cafe. Jo would order a cup of coffee, get her daughter to sleep in the pram and then she would keep writing till the little one woke up. What started as a beautiful idea on a train journey five years earlier, ended one fine day in a cafe in Edinburgh. The cafe where she wrote most of the first book is the one in the picture below. If you are in Edinburgh, do visit it. It’s famous as the birthplace of Harry Potter!
She finished the first book, but she was unsure if anyone would find her story interesting. She made copies of the first three chapters and sent them to many publishers. In the meanwhile, she found work as a teacher in Edinburgh and plodded on with life. Most of the publishers found the ‘first three chapters of Harry Potter’ reasonably uninteresting. They either sent her ‘rejection’ notes or worse - did not even bother to respond to her. Until one fine day, a publisher called Bloomsbury wrote to her - we would like to see the rest of the story, before we can commit to anything. This was the BEST response Jo had received so far. Overjoyed, she made a copy of the full book ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ and sent it along to Bloomsbury.
Bloomsbury’s children’s department was then headed by a man called Barry Cunningham. Barry later recounted this story in one of his interviews - ‘One evening, I went home to my 8-year old daughter and gave her the first three chapters of a book I had received from an author. My daughter finished reading them in one go and couldn’t wait to read the rest of the story!’ That’s when Barry thought the story had potential. The following day, he sent a note to Jo saying - we would like to see the rest of the story, before we can commit to anything. We probably owe much to Barry’s daughter for being instrumental in bringing to life Harry Potter.
Bloomsbury liked the book. They decided to publish it. BUT, they were not sure if they liked the author’s name - Joanne Rowling. Something did not sound right to them.
What’s in a name? The publishers felt that a female author’s name might not make the book popular amongst the boys. So they suggested that they print the book under the name J.Rowling. The reader would never know if the author was male or female! Jo decided to include her grandmother’s name Kathleen as her middle name, thus becoming J.K.Rowling.
This is how the first edition of the first book of the Harry Potter series looked like.
What next for Jo?
The first book - Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in the UK and soon became the bestseller in 1997. Jo was still a teacher at this time and Harry Potter was becoming famous. The book was translated into many languages (eventually, it would be translated into more than 80 languages).
Trivia time: In June 1997, Bloomsbury published 1,000 copies of the first book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. They distributed 500 of these to local libraries. Today, each of these early copies is valued between £16,000 and £25,000. It looks just like the one in the image above! Keep an eye out!
Harry Potter becomes famous in the US!
A few months later, Bloomsbury auctioned the rights to sell the book in the US. Jo got word that a publisher called ‘Scholastic Corporation’ had bought the rights to the book for $105,000. She was overjoyed. She bought a flat with the money. In the meanwhile, the people at Scholastic did not think the title of the first book ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ would sell well in the US.
Why not? The American publisher - a man named Levine wanted a title that said ‘magic’ more overtly to American readers. Levine thought the US audiences would mistake the book to be all about philosophy if you called it ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’. So he first recommended ‘Harry Potter and the School of Magic’. But J.K.Rowling wasn’t convinced. She recommended the use of the word ‘sorcerer’. The American audiences were more familiar with the word ‘sorcerer’ as someone who used magic. The idea clicked and the book was released in the US as ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’! Oddly enough, the rest of the world had no problems with the words ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ and happily continue to read it.
The next six books followed rapidly! With Harry Potter’s worldwide success, Jo quit her job as a teacher and devoted her time to writing the rest of the books. By now, she had a nice writing room set up in her home and she worked from there. Over the next few years, alongside Harry, Ron, Hermione and Voldemort, one more person became famous. That was J.K.Rowling. She was the first person to have earned a billion dollars writing children’s books. She also found happiness in her personal life, when she met someone she liked and later married him.
She needed a new space to write! By the time she was writing the seventh book ‘Deathly Hallows’, Jo was finding the writing room in her home ‘no more quiet’. By now, she had three children. The kids had their friends and dogs running around the house. Life was both fun and loud. In one of her interviews, Jo said -
“[…] there came a day where the window cleaner came, the kids were at home, the dogs were barking and I could not work. And then, this light bulb went on over my head and I thought, I can throw money at this problem.”
She set up writing space in a hotel! Jo went to a hotel in the neighbourhood ‘The Balmoral Hotel’. Room 552 was the one she rented. She completed the last chapters of Deathly Hallows while working from this suite. If you visited this room, you could find a signed statement on a marble bust of Hermes that reads J. K Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (552) on 11th Jan 2007.
