It was an eight-year-old girl, not an 11-year-old boy wizard, who rescued J K Rowling from life on 70-a-week (NZ$180) benefits as a divorced single mother.
Yet, as Nigel Newton, the chairman of Bloomsbury Publishing reveals today, the first Harry Potter manuscript was rejected by all of his major rivals. And it was only the pester-power of his daughter, Alice - who read a chapter and demanded more - that finally convinced the publisher he had a winner on his hands.
Her agent, Christopher Little, called at Bloomsbury Publishing's cramped offices in Soho Square and gave Newton a sample to read. He took it home but, instead of settling down with it himself, handed it to Alice, then eight years old.
"She came down from her room an hour later glowing," Newton recalls, "saying, 'Dad, this is so much better than anything else.'
"She nagged and nagged me in the following months, wanting to see what came next."
Newton made out a cheque to Joanne Kathleen Rowling for just 2,500 (NZ$6,470), which has since proved one of the wisest investments in publishing history
Health and Fitness
Tum Se Tum Tak
