J.K. Rowling’s mother was named Anne.
Anne Rowling was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when Rowling was a teenager and died in 1990 at the age of 45. Her illness and death deeply affected Rowling. Rowling has said that she did not tell her mother about the Harry Potter idea before Anne died, and the loss influenced the emotional importance of parental death in the series.
Harry Potter is an orphan at the beginning of the first novel, and the deaths of Lily and James Potter shape his identity and the series’ central conflict. Rowling’s portrayal of grief is not a simple biography of her mother, but Anne’s death is an important part of the author’s personal background.
Rowling later supported multiple-sclerosis research and founded the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic at the University of Edinburgh. The clinic was named in her mother’s memory. Anne is sometimes confused with Kathleen, the name Rowling chose for the “K” in her professional initials; Kathleen was Rowling’s paternal grandmother.