Which Harry Potter book did J.K. Rowling write in a café while caring for her baby daughter?

J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone while caring for her baby daughter, Jessica.

During a period when she was living in Portugal and later Edinburgh, Rowling worked on the manuscript in different settings. Accounts of the book’s creation often mention writing in cafés while her daughter slept in a pram. The manuscript developed over years before Bloomsbury accepted it for publication.

The café detail is part of the origin story of the first Harry Potter novel, but it does not mean the entire book was written in one place or in a single uninterrupted period. Rowling had begun imagining Harry’s story earlier, and she revised the manuscript substantially before publication.

Jessica was born in 1993, and the British edition of the novel appeared in 1997. The book’s success transformed Rowling’s circumstances, but its creation began as a long writing project undertaken amid ordinary family responsibilities.