Major Themes, Influences, and Artistic Styles

If anyone were to read any of the seven books or just know the story itself, it would be known that one of the mjor themes the J.K. Rowling writes about is Death. "My books are largely about death. They open with the death of Harry's parents. There is Voldemort's obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We're all frightened of it." Throughout the series, there are both deaths of good guys and bad that show the greatest fear of most people, the fear of someone loved dying. J.K. Rowling is quoted to say that "[she doresn't have] the faintest idea where [her] ideas come from, or how [her] imagination works. [She's] just grateful that it does, because it gives [her] more entertainment than it gives anyone else." Rowling has sited some of her influences for Harry Potter being everything from British folklore and mythology to the Bible, and Shakespeare's Macbeath to Jane Austen's Emma. J.K. Rowling is mainly a fantasy writer and she has many writing characteristics that make her distinct from other writers. For example, she makes up her own words for creatures (thestral, hippogriff) and uses latin for spells in the book. (lumos, crucio). She also has the most unusual names for her characters, like Mundungus Fletcher and Luna Lovegood, that are also very memorable.

Career

As you may know, J.K. Rowling's biggest achievment is writing the seven book series of Harry Potter. Because of the incredible successus of the books, Rowling has not only won many awards for her series, but also has recieved many recognitions for herself. In July 1997, Bloomsbury Children's Books published her first novel, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone in the U.K. In the same year, "the book won The British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize". Later in September of 1998, the book was final published in the U.S. by Scholastic Press. After the well recieved reviews and praise, Rowling quickly wrote a second and third installment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The author became a success in the U.S. when all three books held the top three spots on the New York Times best sellers list. "By the summer of 2000, Ms. Rowling had reportedly earned over $400 million for her first three Harry Potter books, which have been printed in 35 languages and sold over 30 million copies". The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire first print run ran at 1 million for the U.S. alone and "broke all records for all records for the greatest number of books sold on the first weekend of publication". The fifth installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix broke all records set by Goblet of Fire "as the fastest selling book in history". The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had record sales, but it was the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that was the "fastest selling book in the UK and USA, and sales [were] well over 400 million copies worldwide". Rowling herself has won countless awards including Author of the Year and Lifetime Achievement Award at British Book Award in 1999 and 2008.

Biography

J.K. Rowling was born July 31, 1965 in a small town in England. Her birth name is Joanne Kathleen Rowling, and she would grow up to be one of the richest author's in the world today. According to her website, Rowling described herself as a "rotund baby". Her mother had her when she was twenty, with only marrying her husband a year prior when they met on a train not too long before that. Rowling's earliest memory she can remember from her childhood is expierencing the birth of her younger sister Di. She can recall walking into her parent's bedroom and seeing "[her] mother lying in bed in her nightdress next to [her] beaming sister, who [was] stark naked with a full head of hair...". The author has said that her sister was her best friend growing up, the time when she frist started writing. Rowling said she's been writing since the age of 5 or 6. Rabbit was the name of her first story and it contained exciting animal characters. After expierencing her mother dying, living in Portugal to be an english teacher, and giving birth to her first daughter, J.K. Rowling ended up in Edinburgh to live with Di to support her daughter as a single mother, and to continue writing a novel she had already started that would soon become the first book of one of the most famous series ever to be published.