blog:who sold the manuscript to Bloomsbury Children’s Books.
In 1992 Rowling left off working in offices and moved to Portugal to teach English as a
Second Language. In spite of her students making jokes about her name (this time they called
her “Rolling Stone”), she enjoyed teaching. She worked afternoons and evenings, leaving
mornings free for writing. After her marriage to a Portuguese TV journalist ended in
divorce, Rowling returned to Britain with her infant daughter and a suitcase full of Harry
Potter notes and chapters. She settled in Edinburgh to be near her sister and set out to
finish the book before looking for a teaching job. Wheeling her daughter’s carriage around
the city to escape their tiny, cold apartment, she would duck into coffee shops to write
when the baby fell asleep. In this way she finished the book and started sending it to
publishers. It was rejected several times before she found an London agent, chosen because
she liked his name–Christopher Little, who sold the manuscript to Bloomsbury Children’s
Books.
