EL James

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
EL James (2019, third from right)

Erika Leonard (* 7. March 1963 as Erika Mitchell in Willesden, London ) is an English writer who especially under her pseudonym E. L. James was known. In 2011 her erotic novel - trilogy Shades of Gray , was published, which was initially published by a small Australian publisher and was successful through word of mouth . More than 125 million copies of the trilogy have been sold worldwide, with the first novel being the fastest-selling paperback ever, ahead of Harry PotterPaperbacks. The film adaptation of the same name was published in 2015 . In February 2017 the sequel Fifty Shades of Gray was released.

Life

Erika Leonard lives in London, is the mother of two sons and has worked as a production manager at the television production company Shooting Stars in London since 1999 . She has been married to screenwriter Niall Leonard since 1987. EL James first published Fifty Shades of Gray from 2009 under the title The Master of the Universe as fan fiction for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga on fan fiction websites under the pseudonym Snowqueens Icedragon , the protagonists were originally Edward Cullen and Bella Swan . After criticizing the details of BDSM practices that deal with dominance and submission, playful punishment and pleasure pain or bondage games, EL James designed the sequel stories and published them on her own website at FiftyShades.com. The author later changed the names of her main characters to Anastasia Steele and Christian Gray, and deleted them on FiftyShades.com as well.

The revised version was published as an e-book and from May 2011 as a paperback for the first time under the title Fifty Shades of Gray , published by the independent publisher The Writer's Coffee Shop in Australia. The second volume, Fifty Shades Darker , was published in September 2011 and the third, Fifty Shades Freed , followed in January 2012. The Writer's Coffee Shop had a small marketing budget and relied largely on reviews of literary blogs - the novels were selling then amplified by word of mouth.

On April 3, 2012, Knopf Verlag launched Fifty Shades of Gray in the USA . The two following volumes appeared two weeks later. To keep up with the enormous demand, the publisher had up to 950,000 copies of the three novels reprinted each week. By the end of May 2012, over 10 million books in the trilogy had been sold in the United States. At the beginning of July 2012, the number of copies sold in the US was already over 20 million.

The translation rights have been sold in numerous countries, and Universal Pictures and Focus Features have jointly secured the film rights to the trilogy . As a result, Fifty Shades of Gray (2015) was a film adaptation of the first part, in which EL James was also involved. The German translation of the first volume was published on July 9, 2012 under the title Shades of Gray by Goldmann Verlag . With Fifty Shades of Gray - Dangerous Love came the film adaptation of the second part and with Fifty Shades of Gray - Freed Lust two years later that of the third part in the cinemas.

The TIME Magazine declared EL James in 2012 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The spelling of her pseudonym is "EL James" - without dots after the initials .

Awards

criticism

  • Regarding the novel Gray : “The biggest problem: You just don't take the male perspective from the book. Whole scenes are repeated almost one to one - only this time it's not Anastasia who thinks about sex all the time, but Christian. A writer should seldom have filled a few hundred pages faster and with less effort. "

Works

  • Fifty Shades of Gray (2011), German: Shades of Gray 01 - Secret Desire. Translation: Andrea Brandl and Sonja Hauser, Goldmann Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-442-47895-8
  • Fifty Shades Darker (2011), German: Shades of Gray 02 - Dangerous Love. Translation: Andrea Brandl and Sonja Hauser, Goldmann Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-442-47896-5
  • Fifty Shades Freed (2012), German: Shades of Gray 03 - Befreite Lust. Translation: Andrea Brandl and Sonja Hauser, Goldmann Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-442-47897-2
  • Gray. Fifty Shades of Gray As Told by Christian. (2015), German; Gray. Fifty Shades of Gray told by Christian himself . Translation: Andrea Bandl, Karin Dufner, Sonja Hauser, Christine Heinzius and Ulrike Laszlo, Goldmann Verlag, ISBN 978-3-442-48423-2
  • Darker. Fifty Shades Darker as Told by Christian. (2017)
  • The mister. (2019)

Web links

Commons : EL James  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Born in 1963 , sueddeutsche.de, accessed on July 17, 2012
  2. ^ Fifty weeks of 'Fifty Shades of Gray' , washingtpost.com, March 15, 2013, accessed March 16, 2013
  3. ↑ 'Mummy porn' Fifty Shades Of Gray outstrips Harry Potter to become fastest selling paperback of all time Article on dailymail.co.uk from June 18, 2012, accessed February 13, 2013
  4. ^ Niall Leonard at VIAF; Niall Leonard at IMDb
  5. ↑ Captivating reading - review by Marie Dové Tages-Anzeiger of March 13, 2012, accessed on June 20, 2012
  6. ↑ Fifty Shades Trilogy Tops 10 Million Sold , Publishers Weekly , May 22, 2012. Retrieved July 11, 2012
  7. ↑ Carolyn Kellogg, '50 Shades of Gray 'series hitting the 20 million mark in sales , Los Angeles Times , July 9, 2012. Retrieved July 14, 2012
  8. ↑ TIME Magazine
  9. ↑ What does the man with the whip think, in: Marler Zeitung , June 19, 2015, p. 11
personal data
SURNAME James, EL
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leonard, Erika (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British author
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH London