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| Date | Event | Details |
|---|---|---|
31 July 1965 | Birth | Joanne Rowling was born on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England. She later adopted the pen name J.K. Rowling at her publisher's suggestion before the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997, using her grandmother's initial K as a middle initial since she has no middle name. She shares her birthday with Harry Potter, a detail she has confirmed was intentional. |
Joanne Rowling was born on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England. She later adopted the pen name J.K. Rowling at her publisher's suggestion before the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997, using her grandmother's initial K as a middle initial since she has no middle name. She shares her birthday with Harry Potter, a detail she has confirmed was intentional.

Harry Potter
1997
Harry Potter has lived in a cupboard under the stairs for as long as he can remember, told his parents died in a car crash and that his strange abilities are nothing to be ashamed of. On his eleventh birthday, a letter arrives - then dozens more - inviting him to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The magical world he enters is ancient, dangerous, and already aware of who he is. Rowling's debut novel establishes the full landscape of the series with remarkable confidence: Diagon Alley, the Hogwarts Express, the house system, Quidditch, and the long shadow of a dark wizard whose name most people are afraid to speak. It is a book about discovering that the world is larger and stranger than you were led to believe.

Harry Potter
1998
Harry's second year at Hogwarts begins with a warning from a house elf and ends with a monster in the pipes. Students and ghosts are being found petrified, a message painted on the wall promises worse to come, and someone is claiming to be the heir of Slytherin. The second novel deepens the mythology established in the first, introducing Tom Riddle's diary, the history of the school's founders, and the first glimpse of how Voldemort's past will come to define Harry's future. Darker and more tightly plotted than its predecessor, it builds on the series' central question - what is the connection between Harry and the dark wizard who tried to kill him - with new and unsettling precision.