Page featuring JK Rowling’s first national newspaper interview up for auction

Rowling is now worth around £820 million following the global success of the Harry Potter franchise, and the anonymous owner of the 24-year-old Telegraph piece could now also profit from her success, as the page in the newspaper costing less than £1 in 1997 could now sell for an estimated £150.

Much of the focus of the article is on the author’s rag to riches story, and she tells Telegraph journalist Elisabeth Dunn in the piece that she had “no intention, no desire, to remain on benefits”, adding:  “I was a graduate, I had skills.  

“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.”

Rowling famously began writing her Harry Potter series in Edinburgh’s cafes, and the page 17 interview up for sale with Forum Auctions is drawn from a chat with the author which took place in Nicholson’s cafe on Prince’s Street, where the writer was a regular.