<P> Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990 . The seven - year period that followed saw the death of her mother, birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997 . There were six sequels, of which the last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in 2007 . Since then, Rowling has written four books for adult readers: The Casual Vacancy (2012) and--under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith--the crime fiction novels The Cuckoo's Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014) and Career of Evil (2015). </P> <P> Rowling has lived a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to multi-millionaire status within five years . She is the United Kingdom's best - selling living author, with sales in excess of £ 238M . The 2016 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £ 600 million, ranking her as the joint 197th richest person in the UK . Time magazine named her as a runner - up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans . In October 2010, Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors . She has supported charities including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Lumos . </P> <P> Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling (pronounced rolling), her name, before her remarriage, 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 asked that she use two initials rather than her full name . As she had no middle name, she chose K (for Kathleen) as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother . She calls herself Jo. Following her remarriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business . During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling and her entry in Who's Who lists her name also as Joanne Kathleen Rowling . </P> <P> Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls - Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), a science technician, on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol . Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964 . They married on 14 March 1965 . One of her maternal great - grandfathers, Dugald Campbell, was Scottish, born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran . Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was French, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles - le - Comte during the First World War . Rowling originally believed he had won the Légion d'honneur during the war, as she said when she received it herself in 2009 . She later discovered the truth when featured in an episode of the UK genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, in which she found out it was a different Louis Volant who won the Legion of Honour . When she heard his story of bravery and discovered the croix de guerre was for "ordinary" soldiers like her grandfather, who had been a waiter, she stated the croix de guerre was "better" to her than the Legion of Honour . </P>

Why did jk rowling use a pseudonym for harry potter