J. K. Rowling was born Joanne Rowling on July 31, 1965, in Chipping Sodbury, England. After a thorough education in the classics, including a degree from Exeter University, Rowling worked various jobs before becoming a full-time writer. She was married in 1992 and had a daughter in 1993, but she divorced her husband that year. As a single mother, she often struggled to make ends meet, even going on public assistance at one point.

During this period, Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in England in 1997. The book was published as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States in 1998. The novel, about a young wizard's coming of age, was a huge hit in both Britain and the United States, and Rowling has since become one of the most successful novelists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. She followed up on...