The annual survey of the 1,000 richest people in Britain showed that Rowling, 37, the wealthiest woman in the showbusiness section, has more than quadrupled her fortune in the past two years.

The writer's success places her at 122 in the overall list, while the queen's fortune of 250 million pounds places her at 133.

Rowling's current financial circumstances are a far cry from those she faced after the birth of her first child, Jessica, 10 years ago.

After her first marriage broke down, the single mother lived on 70 pounds a week state benefits in a small flat in Edinburgh, writing most of her first book, "Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone", in a cafe as her baby slept.

Publisher Bloomsbury bought the rights to the book and advised Rowling not to use her names Joanne Kathleen on the cover because it believed boys would not read adventure stories written by a woman.

Since then sales of the Harry Potter series have topped 190 million worldwide, making her the the richest woman author in the world.

The Harry Potter series is now available in more than 40 languages, recounting the magical exploits of Harry and his wizard school friends and his struggle against evil Lord Valdemort.

The much-awaited fifth instalment, "Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix", is due to hit the shelves on June 21, and is set to beat all previous records.

The Duke of Westminster topped the Sunday Times Rich List for the third successive year, with wealth valued at 4.9 billion pounds.

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Ekeing It Out in Edinburgh

Meanwhile, Rowling faced lean times in 1994, which later spawned several legends. There were claims that she lived "on the dole" (welfare) in an unheated apartment. She would walk around town with baby Jessica and go write in cafes to keep warm, scribbling on napkins because she was so poor, she couldn’t afford paper.

There is some truth in these stories. Rowling was on public assistance, because she wanted to get a job, but she did not qualify for low-cost day care for Jessica. Her payment from the Scottish government was £70 (about $100) a week. She found occasional secretarial work a few hours a week, but not much more, because she could earn only £15 ($22.50) a week beyond her monthly government aid. The additional money "made a difference. I didn't have to slide into the Mothercare baby-changing room and stuff extra free nappies [diapers] into my bag at the end of the week."

Rowling also suffered severe depression for a short time as she tried to cope with this low point in her life. The experience led to creation of the dementors in The Prisoner of Azkaban.

The apartment house where Rowling lived while a single mother on welfare. The circled window shows the location of the flat.

The supposedly unheated flat actually was warm, and had additional tenants. "We had heat; we had mice as well. For six months I lived exclusively on welfare," she said. Also tired of hearing about the cold apartment, she said on the BBC's Harry Potter and Me, "I would not be stupid enough to rent an unheated flat in Edinburgh in the winter."

Rowling recalled about that time, at a Council of One Parent Families Event, "I swore to myself that I would finish my book at last - lots of evenings in (every evening in for over a year, as it turned out) - plenty of time to concentrate - if I concentrated hard enough, maybe I'd be able to block out the sounds of mice behind the skirting board.

"Underneath all this forced optimism a small voice was still saying, 'What have you brought your daughter back to?' "

Rowling did like to push Jessica around town in her stroller until she fell asleep, and then go inside an establishment to write. Rowling has wanted lay to rest another myth about her welfare years: she didn't go to cafés because her flat was unheated, but because "I liked other people making me coffee."

After six months in the awful apartment, she borrowed £600 ($900) from a friend to find a better place. When she called landlords, however, she kept being told that they didn't rent to people getting government housing checks. One rental office finally gave her a chance and gave her an unfurnished flat. Friends donated enough items for her to get by.

The exterior (top) and interior of Nicolson's Café, where Rowling sipped coffee and wrote out chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Rowling's favorite hangout in which to write while Jessica napped was Nicolson’s Café, where she could get a cheap cup of espresso and write – on notepads. She could afford them, after all. There also was a family connection through the café – her brother-in-law, Roger Moore, was a co-owner.

"I had an American journalist say to me, 'Is it true that you wrote the whole of the first novel on napkins?' I was tempted to say, 'On teabags. I used to save them,' " she told Scholastic.

Rowling did, however, write out the Hogwarts houses on the back of an airline sickness bag. Her Latin came in handy for character names and wizard spells – with alterations to create her own version of the classic language. Other character names came from place names – the Dursleys were borrowed from a town in the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucester, and Dumbledore’s name came from a medieval English word for "bumblebee." Other sources were Middle Ages saints, maps, plants and war memorials, she told Amazon UK. Hermione came from Shakespeare's The Winter’s Tale.

During her time on welfare, Rowling knew she had to raise her standard of living. She remembers visiting one of Di's friends and seeing her son's room full of toys, in contrast to the very few playthings that Jessica owned. At another time a health services worker brought some old toys and a "grubby old teddy bear" for Jessica, Rowling said. That left her so ashamed that she stuffed it into a trash bag and pretended she never received it.

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