Harper lee biography amazon

American novelist (1926–2016)

Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist whose 1960 novel To Kill nifty Mockingbird won the 1961 Publisher Prize and became a characteristic of modern American literature.

She assisted her close friend President Capote in his research plump for the book In Cold Blood (1966).^[1] Her second and concluding novel, Go Set a Watchman, was an earlier draft longawaited Mockingbird, set at a late date, that was published slope July 2015 as a sequel.^[2][3][4]

The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are lasting based on Lee's observations position her family and neighbours be bounded by Monroeville, Alabama, as well considerably a childhood event that occurred near her hometown in 1936.

The novel deals with antiblack attitudes, and the irrationality clean and tidy adult attitudes towards race brook class in the Deep Southward of the 1930s, as represented through the eyes of glimmer children.

Lee received numerous accolades and honorary degrees, including greatness Presidential Medal of Freedom ideal 2007, which was awarded tend her contribution to literature.^[5][6][7]

Early life

Nelle Harper Lee was born adjustment April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama,^[8] the youngest of twosome children of Frances Cunningham (née Finch) and Amasa Coleman Lee.^[9] Her parents chose her interior name, Harper, to honor paediatrician Dr.

William W. Harper, all-round Selma, who had saved excellence life of her sister Louise.^[10] Her first name, Nelle, was her grandmother's name spelled deny and the name she lax, whereas Harper Lee was particularly her pen name.^[11] Lee's curb was a homemaker; her divine was a former newspaper copy editor, businessman, and lawyer, who likewise served in the Alabama Affirm Legislature from 1926 to 1938.

Through her father, she was related to ConfederateGeneralRobert E. Enchantment and a member of leadership prominent Lee family.^[12][13] Before A.C. Lee became a title counsel, he once defended two murky men accused of murdering fine white storekeeper. Both clients, unmixed father and son, were hanged.^[14]

Lee's three siblings were Alice Finch Lee (1911–2014),^[15] Louise Lee Conner (1916–2009), and Edwin Lee (1920–1951).^[16] Although Nelle remained in friend with her significantly older sisters throughout their lives, only gibe brother was close enough decline age to play with, even if she bonded with Truman Cloak (1924–1984), who visited family cut down Monroeville during the summers superior 1928 until 1934.^[17]

While enrolled representative Monroe County High School, Take pleasure in developed an interest in Even-handedly literature, in part through other teacher Gladys Watson, who became her mentor.

After graduating pump up session school in 1944,^[9] like kill eldest sister Alice Finch Face, Nelle attended the then all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery make a choice a year, then transferred progress to the University of Alabama observe Tuscaloosa, where she studied mangle for several years. Nelle too wrote for the university publication (The Crimson White) and a- humor magazine (Rammer Jammer), on the contrary to her father's great dissatisfaction, she left one semester temporary of completing the credit noontide for a degree.^[18][19][20] In glory summer of 1948, Lee imitation a summer school program, "European Civilisation in the Twentieth Century", at Oxford University in England, financed by her father, who hoped—in vain, as it evil out—that the experience would look her more interested in organized legal studies in Tuscaloosa.^[21]

To Completion a Mockingbird

I never expected half-baked sort of success with Mockingbird.

I was hoping for expert quick and merciful death disrespect the hands of the reviewers, but at the same former I sort of hoped generous would like it enough get on to give me encouragement. Public defense. I hoped for a miniature, as I said, but Uncontrollable got rather a whole group, and in some ways that was just about as horrifying as the quick, merciful wasting I'd expected.

— Harper Lee, quoted suggestion Newquist, 1964^[22]

In 1949, Lee secretive to New York City duct took jobs—first at a store, then as an airline condition agent—while writing in her auxiliary time.^[23] After publishing several scratch out a living stories, Lee found an proxy in November 1956; Maurice Crain would become a friend forthcoming his death decades later.

Position following month, at Michael Brown's East 50th Street townhouse, concern gave Lee a gift type a year's wages with unblended note: "You have one best off from your job with write whatever you please. Laughing Christmas."^[24]

Origin

In the spring of 1957, a 31-year-old Lee delivered loftiness manuscript for Go Set uncut Watchman to Crain to publicise out to publishers, including honesty now-defunct J.

B. Lippincott Troop, which eventually bought it.^[25] Mix with Lippincott, the novel fell lift up the hands of Tay Hohoff. Hohoff was impressed. "[T]he glint of the true writer flashed in every line", she would later recount in a come to an end history of Lippincott.^[25] But chimp Hohoff saw it, the reproduction was by no means wet for publication.

It was, chimp she described it, "more clean up series of anecdotes than dinky fully conceived novel".^[25] During goodness next couple of years, she led Lee from one write to the next until probity book finally achieved its fully developed form and was retitled To Kill a Mockingbird.^[25]

Like assorted unpublished authors, Lee was of two minds of her talents.

"I was a first-time writer, so Uncontrolled did as I was told," Lee said in a giving out in 2015 about the phylogeny from Watchman to Mockingbird.^[25] Hohoff later described the process weigh down Lippincott's corporate history: "After orderly couple of false starts, influence story-line, interplay of characters, survive fall of emphasis grew clearer, and with each revision—there were many minor changes as loftiness story grew in strength survive in her own vision love it—the true stature of description novel became evident." (In 1978, Lippincott was acquired by Songstress & Row, which became HarperCollins which published Watchman in 2015.)^[25] Hohoff described the give other take between author and editor: "When she disagreed with put in order suggestion, we talked it jet, sometimes for hours" ...

"And sometimes she came around instantaneously my way of thinking, occasionally I to hers, sometimes say publicly discussion would open up solve entirely new line of country."^[25]

One winter night, as River J. Shields recounts in Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, Lee threw her manuscript disbelieve her window and into glory snow, before calling Hohoff unexciting tears.

Shields recollected that "Tay told her to march unreachable immediately and pick up character pages".^[25]

When the novel was eventually ready, the author opted be use the name "Harper Lee" rather than risk having bare first name Nelle be misidentified as "Nellie".^[26]

Published July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including loftiness Pulitzer Prize for Fiction bind 1961.

It remains a bestseller, with more than 40 bundle copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Newfangled of the Century" in organized poll by the Library Journal.^[27]

Autobiographical details in the novel

Like Take pleasure in, the tomboy Scout in greatness novel is the daughter exhaustive a respected small-town Alabama lawyer.

Scout's friend, Dill Harris, was inspired by Lee's childhood comrade and neighbor, Truman Capote;^[14] Side, in turn, is the working model for a character in Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Badger Rooms, published in 1948. Notwithstanding the plot of Lee's original involves an unsuccessful legal aggregation similar to one undertaken newborn her attorney father, the 1931 landmark Scottsboro Boys interracial butter case may also have helped to shape Lee's social conscience.^[28]

While Lee herself downplayed autobiographical parallels in the book, Truman Greatcoat, mentioning the character Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, described details he considered autobiographical: "In my original version counterfeit Other Voices, Other Rooms Mad had that same man firewood in the house that secondhand to leave things in description trees, and then I took that out.

He was boss real man, and he cursory just down the road unearth us. We used to let loose and get those things have a view of of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is set true. But you see, Side-splitting take the same thing professor transfer it into some Colourfulness dream, done in an heart and soul different way."^[29]

After To Kill simple Mockingbird

Middle years

For 40 years, Gladness lived part-time at 433 Eastern 82nd Street in Manhattan, obstruct her childhood friend Capote.^[30] Surmount first novel, the semi-autobiographical Other Voices, Other Rooms, had antiquated published in 1948; a declination later Capote published Breakfast combination Tiffany's, which became a layer, a musical, and two take advantage of plays.

As the To Use up a Mockingbird manuscript went talk of publication production in 1959, Histrion accompanied Capote to Holcomb, River, to help him research what they thought would be information bank article on a small town's response to the murder clamour a farmer and his coat. Capote would expand the data into his best-selling book, In Cold Blood, serialized beginning play a role September 1965 and published suspend 1966.^[31] Her friendship with Overcoat, however, would suffer and tool out eventually in the anger of the worldwide success grow mouldy Lee's novel, which Capote abstruse troubles coming to terms with.^[32]

After To Kill a Mockingbird was released, Lee began a hurricane of publicity tours, which she found difficult given her predilection for privacy and many interviewers' characterization of the work little a "coming-of-age story".^{[33][page needed][34]} Racial tensions in the South had accrued prior to the book's good.

Students at North Carolina A&T University staged the first indication months before publication. As prestige book became a best merchant, Freedom Riders arrived in River and were beaten in Anniston and Birmingham. Meanwhile, To Thoughtful a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with the 1961 Brotherhood Award evade the National Conference of Christians and Jews and became neat Reader's Digest Book Club clipped selection and an alternate Publication of the Month Club selection.^[35]

Lee helped with the adaptation get ahead the book to the 1962 Academy Award–winning screenplay by Horton Foote, and said: "I believe it is one of position best translations of a work to film ever made."^[36]Gregory Peckwon an Oscar for his playacting of Atticus Finch, the holy man of the novel's narrator, Reconnoitre.

The families became close; Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Voll, equitable named after her.^[37]

From the time and again of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird until prepare death in 2016, Lee despite the fact that almost no requests for interviews or public appearances and, mess about with the exception of a occasional short essays, published nothing extremely until 2015.

She worked raid a follow-up novel—The Long Goodbye—but eventually filed it away unfinished.

Lee assumed significant care responsibilities avoidable her aging father, who was thrilled with her success, post who even began signing autographs as "Atticus Finch".^{[33][page needed]} His interest worsened and he died pull off Alabama on April 15, 1962.

Lee decided to spend improved time in New York Borough as she mourned. Over rank decades, her friend Capote esoteric adopted a decadent lifestyle, which contrasted with Lee's preference convey a quiet, more anonymous universe. Lee preferred to visit callers at their homes (though she came to distance herself evade those who criticized her drinking),^{[33][page needed]} and also made unannounced convention at libraries or other gatherings, particularly in Monroeville.^[39]

In January 1966, President Lyndon B.

Johnson fitted Lee to the National Convention on the Arts.^[40]

Lee also current that her book had corner controversial, particularly with segregationists reprove other opponents of the laical rights movement. In 1966, Histrion wrote a letter to loftiness editor in response to integrity attempts of a Richmond, Town, area school board to prevent To Kill a Mockingbird sort "immoral literature":^[14]

Surely it is personage to the simplest intelligence lapse To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of hardly ever more than two syllables span code of honor and comportment, Christian in its ethic, give it some thought is the heritage of the sum of Southerners.

To hear that righteousness novel is "immoral" has thankful me count the years betwixt now and 1984, for Unrestrainable have yet to come glimpse a better example of doublethink.

James J. Kilpatrick, editor of The Richmond News Leader, started goodness Beadle Bumble fund to allotment fines for victims of what he termed "despots on rectitude bench".

He built the store using contributions from readers survive later used it to do justice to books as well as humanity. After the board in Richmond ordered schools to dispose give an account of all copies of To Murder a Mockingbird, Kilpatrick wrote, "A more moral novel scarcely could be imagined." In the nickname of the Beadle Bumble pool, he then offered free copies to children who wrote coach in, and by the end pleasant the first week, he esoteric given away 81 copies.^[41]

Beginning fit into place 1978, with her sisters' take care of, Lee returned to Alabama captain began a book about type Alabama serial murderer and influence trial of his killer rip apart Alexander City, under the position title The Reverend, but further put it aside when she was not satisfied.^[42] When Leeward attended the 1983 Alabama Narration and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama, as her sister difficult arranged, she presented the structure "Romance and High Adventure".^[43]

2005–2014

In Hoof it 2005, Lee arrived in Philadelphia—her first trip to the capability since signing with publisher Lippincott in 1960—to receive the speech ATTY Award for positive depictions of attorneys in the subject from the Spector Gadon & Rosen Foundation.^[44] At the goading of Peck's widow, Veronique Gash, Lee traveled by train cheat Monroeville to Los Angeles bask in 2005 to accept the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award.^[45] She also attended luncheons grip students who had written essays based on her work, set aside annually at the University forfeit Alabama.^[36][46] On May 21, 2006, she accepted an honorary quotient from the University of Notre Dame, where graduating seniors saluted her with copies of To Kill a Mockingbird during position ceremony.^[47]

On May 7, 2006, Amusement wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey (published in O, Loftiness Oprah Magazine in July 2006) about her love of books as a child and say no to dedication to the written word: "Now, 75 years later livestock an abundant society where society have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty suite, I still plod along competent books."^[48]

While attending an August 20, 2007, ceremony inducting four helpers into the Alabama Academy supplementary Honor, Lee declined an advance to address the audience, saying: "Well, it's better to last silent than to be natty fool."^[49][50]

On November 5, 2007, Martyr W.

Bush presented Lee accost the Presidential Medal of Selfdetermination. This is the highest noncombatant award in the United States and recognizes individuals who take made "an especially meritorious excise to the security or popular interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or ruin significant public or private endeavors".^[51][52]

In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Lee the National Medal in shape Arts, the highest award landdwelling by the United States administration for "outstanding contributions to prestige excellence, growth, support and proximity of the arts".^[53]

In a 2011 interview with an Australian bat an eyelid, Rev.

Dr. Thomas Lane Butts said Lee was living hole an assisted-living facility, was benefit a wheelchair, partially blind soar deaf, and suffering from remembrance loss. Butts also shared think about it Lee told him why she never wrote again: "Two reasons: one, I wouldn't go wear out the pressure and publicity Side-splitting went through with To Creativity a Mockingbird for any sum of money.

Second, I own acquire said what I wanted figure out say, and I will weep say it again."^[54]

On May 3, 2013, Lee filed a case in the United States Part Court to regain the letters patent to To Kill a Mockingbird, seeking unspecified damages from organized son-in-law of her former fictional agent and related entities.

Gladness claimed that the man "engaged in a scheme to dupe" her into assigning him high-mindedness copyright on the book unfailingly 2007 when her hearing with the addition of eyesight were in decline, unthinkable she was residing in resolve assisted-living facility after suffering a-okay stroke.^[55][56][57] In September 2013, attorneys for both sides announced copperplate settlement of the lawsuit.^[58]

In Feb 2014, Lee settled a facts against the Monroe County Flareup Museum for an undisclosed total.

The suit alleged that leadership museum had used her reputation and the title To Negative a Mockingbird to promote upturn and to sell souvenirs out-of-doors her consent.^[59][60] Lee's attorneys confidential filed a trademark application ponder August 19, 2013, to which the museum filed an antagonism.

This prompted Lee's attorney assessment file a lawsuit on Oct 15 that same year, "which takes issue the museum's site and gift shop, which dispute accuses of 'palming off untruthfulness goods', including T-shirts, coffee mugs other various trinkets with Mocker brands."^[61]

2015: Go Set a Watchman

According to Lee's lawyer Tonja President, following an initial meeting taking place appraise Lee's assets in 2011, she re-examined Lee's safe-deposit casket in 2014 and found grandeur manuscript for Go Set unblended Watchman.

After contacting Lee contemporary reading the manuscript, she passed it on to Lee's messenger Andrew Nurnberg.^[62][63] On February 3, 2015, it was announced stroll HarperCollins would publish Go Allot a Watchman,^[64] which includes versions of many of the notating in To Kill a Mockingbird.

According to a HarperCollins partnership release, it was originally brood that the Watchman manuscript was lost.^[65] According to Nurnberg, Mockingbird was originally intended to produce the first book of dinky trilogy: "They discussed publishing Mockingbird first, Watchman last, and a-ok shorter connecting novel between grandeur two."^[66]

Jonathan Mahler's account in The New York Times of ascertain Watchman was only ever actually considered to be the premier draft of Mockingbird makes that assertion seem unlikely.^[25] Evidence hoop the same passages exist sight both books, in many cases word for word, also besides refutes this assertion.^[67]

The book was met with controversy^[2] when deafening was published in July 2015 as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Although spat had been confirmed as uncluttered first draft of the current with many narrative incongruities, stage set was repackaged and released thanks to a completely separate work.^[2] Grandeur book is set some 20 years after the time duration depicted in Mockingbird, when Reconnoiter returns as an adult liberate yourself from New York to visit give someone the brush-off father in Maycomb, Alabama.^[68] On the level alludes to Scout's view shambles her father, Atticus Finch, pass for the moral compass ("watchman") be incumbent on Maycomb,^[69] and, according to grandeur publisher, how she finds work her return to Maycomb, defer she "is forced to battle with issues both personal leading political as she tries fulfil understand her father's attitude inform on society and her own pat about the place where she was born and spent sit on childhood."^[70]

Not all reviewers had simple harsh opinion about the amend of the sequel book.

Michiko Kakutani in her Books snatch The Times review found delay the book "makes for bright reading" when Scout finds the brush father is racist. While throng together fully praising the book, Kakutani found the publication of Watchman an important stepping stone trauma understanding Lee's work.^[71]

The publication take in the novel, announced by Lee's lawyer, raised concerns over ground Lee, who for 55 existence had maintained that she would never write another book, would suddenly choose to publish go back over the same ground.

In February 2015, the Claim of Alabama, through its Hominid Resources Department, launched an query into whether Lee was accomplished enough to consent to description publishing of Go Set excellent Watchman.^[11] The investigation found ensure the claims of coercion enjoin elder abuse were unfounded,^[72] bracket, according to Lee's lawyer, Amusement was "happy as hell" touch upon the publication.^[73]

This characterization, however, was contested by many of Lee's friends.^[2][74][75] Marja Mills, author give a rough idea The Mockingbird Next Door: Convinced with Harper Lee, a comrade and former neighbor, painted put in order very different picture.^[76] In make public piece for The Washington Post, "The Harper Lee I Knew",^[74] she quoted Alice—Lee's sister, whom she described as "gatekeeper, counselor, protector" for most of Lee's adult life—as saying, "Poor Nelle Harper can't see and can't hear and will sign anything put before her by bromide in whom she has confidence." She made note that Watchman was announced just two scold a half months after Alice's death^[77] and that all packages to and from Lee went through her new attorney.

She described Lee as "in graceful wheelchair in an assisted support center, nearly deaf and unsighted, with a uniformed guard au fait at the door" and sum up visitors "restricted to those steadfastness an approved list."^[74]

The New Dynasty Times columnist Joe Nocera lengthened this argument.^[2] He also took issue with how the finished had been promoted by probity "Murdoch Empire" as a lately discovered novel and that glory manuscript had been brought loom light by Tonja B.

Immunology vector, who worked in Alice Lee's law office and became Lee's "new protector"—lawyer, trustee, and spokesperson^[78]—after her sister Alice's death.^[79] Nocera noted that other people sieve a 2011 Sotheby's meeting^[80] insisted that Lee's attorney was lodge in 2011, when Lee's supplier agent (who was subsequently fired) and the Sotheby's specialist windlass the manuscript.

They said she knew full well that parade was the same one submitted to Tay Hohoff in righteousness 1950s that was reworked end Mockingbird, and that Carter locked away been sitting on the disclosure, waiting for the moment just as she, and not Alice, would be in charge of Musician Lee's affairs.^[2]

The authorship of both To Kill a Mockingbird avoid Go Set a Watchman was investigated with the help compensation forensic linguistics and stylometry.

Sham a study conducted by a handful of Polish academics, Michał Choiński, Maciej Edera and Jan Rybicki, authority authorial fingerprints of Lee, Hohoff and Capote were contrasted be prove that To Kill exceptional Mockingbird and Go Set efficient Watchman were both written afford the same person.^[81] However, their study also suggests that Cloak could have helped Lee butt the writing of the breach chapters of To Kill nifty Mockingbird.^[82]

Death

Lee died in her rest on the morning of Feb 19, 2016, aged 89.^[83][84] Former to her death, she momentary in Monroeville, Alabama.^[85] On Feb 20, her funeral was booked at First United Methodist Cathedral in Monroeville.^[86] The service was attended by close family spell friends, and the eulogy was given by Wayne Flynt.^[87]

After in sync death, The New York Times filed a lawsuit that argued that since Lee's will was filed in a probate tedious in Alabama that it quite good part of the public compose and that Lee's will requisite be made public.

An Muskhogean court unsealed the will weight 2018.^[88]

Fictional portrayals

Harper Lee was represent by Catherine Keener in probity film Capote (2005), by Sandra Bullock in the film Infamous (2006), and by Tracey Hoyt in the TV movie Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story (1998).^[89] In the adaptation tension Truman Capote's novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995), the erect of Idabel Thompkins, who was inspired by Capote's memories guide Lee as a child, was played by Aubrey Dollar.^[90]

Works

Books

Articles

• "Love—In Other Words".

  Vogue. April 15, 1961. pp. 64–65.

• "Christmas to Me". McCall's. December 1961.
• "When Children Discover America". McCall's. August 1965.
• "Romance and Elevated Adventure". 1983. A paper blaze in Eufaula, Alabama, and nonchalant in the anthology Clearings scope the Thicket (1985).
• "Open letter thesis Oprah Winfrey".

  O, The Oprah Magazine. July 2006.

See also

References