JK Rowling’s first national newspaper interview up for auction
The first ever national newspaper interview with JK Rowling is up for auction, recalling her ‘rags to riches’ journey in 1997.
The interview by The Daily Telegraph from July 1997 profiled the then 31-year-old author following the release of her debut novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Still going by Joanne Rowling, the interview discusses how film studios were bidding for the rights to her children’s novel.
It is revealed that the newly wealthy Rowling has treated herself to a £100 jacket to wear for TV appearances after signing a £100,000 book deal, and the Telegraph’s interviewer Elisabeth Dunn predicts in her piece that the author may become “a millionaire by 40”.
The film deals that Rowling was then on the cusp on when on to make well over $900m (£676m) each worldwide,
Rowling said in the piece: “I knew my prospects, long-term, were good. It must be different for women who don’t have that belief and end up in the poverty trap. It’s the hopelessness of it, the loss of self-esteem.”
“For me, at least, it was only six months. I was writing all the time which saved my sanity”, she added.