Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets PDF æ Harry Robert GalbraithAlthough she writes under the pen name JK Rowling pronounced like rolling her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman her publishers demanded that she use two initials rather than her full name As she had no middle name she chose K as the second initial of her pen name from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling She calls herself Jo and has said No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young unless they were angry Following her marriage she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business During the Leveson Inuiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling In a 2012 interview Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectlyRowling was born to Peter James Rowling a Rolls Royce aircraft engineer and Anne Rowling née Volant on 31 July 1965 in Yate Gloucestershire England 10 miles 16 km northeast of Bristol Her mother Anne was half French and half Scottish Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964 They married on 14 March 1965 Her mother's maternal grandfather Dugald Campbell was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran Her mother's paternal grandfather Louis Volant was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles le Comte during the First World WarRowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four She attended St Michael's Primary School a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More Her headmaster at St Michael's Alfred Dunn has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus DumbledoreAs a child Rowling often wrote fantasy stories which she would usually then read to her sister She recalls that I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it Certainly the first story I ever wrote down when I was five or six was about a rabbit called Rabbit He got the measles and was visited by his friends including a giant bee called Miss Bee At the age of nine Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill close to Chepstow Wales When she was a young teenager her great aunt who Rowling said taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge even of a uestionable kind gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography Hons and Rebels Mitford became Rowling's heroine and Rowling subseuently read all of her booksRowling has said of her teenage years in an interview with The New Yorker I wasn’t particularly happy I think it’s a dreadful time of life She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father she is no longer on speaking terms with him She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department Rowling said of her adolescence Hermione a bookish know it all Harry Potter character is loosely based on me She's a caricature of me when I was eleven which I'm not particularly proud of Steve Eddy who taught Rowling English when she first arrived remembers her as not exceptional but one of a group of girls who were bright and uite good at English Sean Harris her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turuoise Ford Anglia which she says inspired the one in her books