SHE is now among the richest woman in Britain, and amassed much of her £500million fortune in just five years, after the titanic success of her adventure novels.
But JK Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury, once sent out a copy of Harry Potter and the Philoshoper’s Stone to critics, authors and booksellers across the UK – with her name spelt wrong.
Critics’ first glimpse of the novel, which had been written by the impoverished single mum in coffee shops around Edinburgh, cited the author as J.A.Rowling, with the publisher’s note calling her ‘Joanna’.
Now the mistake has been revealed as an ‘uncorrected’ version goes under the hammer today at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh.
The plain-covered novel, which contains grammatical and spelling errors, is expected to fetch around £1800.Alex Dove, books specialist at Lyon & Turnbull, said that the copy would be a big catch for avid fans of the billion pound franchise.
J.A. Rowling
She said: “They would have been sent out to critics to review by the publishers.
“There are some mistakes, and the main one obviously is that they actually spelt her name wrong.
“On the inside cover they have her down as J.A.Rowling, and on the publisher’s note they call her Joanna Rowling.
“The copies where critics have written their review on the pages, or written ditties, will be worth a lot more, and the first editions we’ve seen do fetch more than this will.
“But it’s still quite a collectors’ item and it’ll make somebody who wants the whole collection very happy.”
£1,500 advance
Rowling, who calls herself Jo, has since said that ‘no one ever called me ‘Joanne’ when I was young, unless they were angry.”
In 1996 Bloomsbury gave Rowling a £1,500 advance for the first title, which was famously written on an old manual typewriter.
The near-overnight success of the novels and the big-budget movie franchise that it spawned is believed to be worth between £15billion.
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