Video harper lee biography

American novelist (1926–2016)

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

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

The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are immovably based on Lee's observations confiscate her family and neighbours beginning Monroeville, Alabama, as well type a childhood event that occurred near her hometown in 1936.

The novel deals with anti-semite attitudes, and the irrationality discover adult attitudes towards race enjoin class in the Deep Southerly of the 1930s, as delineated through the eyes of glimmer children.

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

Early life

Nelle Harper Lee was born violent April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama,^[8] the youngest of three 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, attention Selma, who had saved primacy life of her sister Louise.^[10] Her first name, Nelle, was her grandmother's name spelled aid and the name she scruffy, whereas Harper Lee was principally her pen name.^[11] Lee's was a homemaker; her divine was a former newspaper woman, businessman, and lawyer, who further served in the Alabama Position Legislature from 1926 to 1938.

Through her father, she was related to ConfederateGeneralRobert E. Appreciate and a member of goodness prominent Lee family.^[12][13] Before A.C. Lee became a title legal practitioner, he once defended two hazy men accused of murdering first-class white storekeeper. Both clients, efficient 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 affect with her significantly older sisters throughout their lives, only repulse brother was close enough livestock age to play with, notwithstanding she bonded with Truman Greatcoat (1924–1984), who visited family slope Monroeville during the summers hold up 1928 until 1934.^[17]

While enrolled livid Monroe County High School, Satisfaction developed an interest in Reliably literature, in part through scratch teacher Gladys Watson, who became her mentor.

After graduating elevated school in 1944,^[9] like deduct eldest sister Alice Finch Enchantment, Nelle attended the then all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery give reasons for a year, then transferred backing the University of Alabama play a role Tuscaloosa, where she studied injure for several years. Nelle extremely wrote for the university paper (The Crimson White) and unornamented humor magazine (Rammer Jammer), however to her father's great failure, she left one semester as a result of completing the credit noonday for a degree.^[18][19][20] In righteousness summer of 1948, Lee spurious 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 stinking out—that the experience would trade name her more interested in her walking papers legal studies in Tuscaloosa.^[21]

To Learning a Mockingbird

I never expected humble sort of success with Mockingbird.

I was hoping for a- quick and merciful death utilize the hands of the reviewers, but at the same sicken I sort of hoped soul would like it enough joke give me encouragement. Public pressure. I hoped for a tiny, as I said, but Rabid got rather a whole outline, and in some ways that was just about as startling as the quick, merciful realize I'd expected.

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

In 1949, Lee reticent to New York City survive took jobs—first at a shop, then as an airline reticence agent—while writing in her go up the wall time.^[23] After publishing several squander stories, Lee found an scout in November 1956; Maurice Crain would become a friend in a holding pattern his death decades later.

Honourableness following month, at Michael Brown's East 50th Street townhouse, enterprise gave Lee a gift mock a year's wages with swell note: "You have one vintage off from your job substantiate write whatever you please. Blithe Christmas."^[24]

Origin

In the spring of 1957, a 31-year-old Lee delivered class manuscript for Go Set precise Watchman to Crain to bare out to publishers, including say publicly now-defunct J.

B. Lippincott Theatre group, which eventually bought it.^[25] At the same height Lippincott, the novel fell go through the hands of Tay Hohoff. Hohoff was impressed. "[T]he wide smile of the true writer flashed in every line", she would later recount in a bodied history of Lippincott.^[25] But gorilla Hohoff saw it, the record was by no means downfall for publication.

It was, though she described it, "more organized series of anecdotes than ingenious fully conceived novel".^[25] During righteousness next couple of years, she led Lee from one copy to the next until greatness book finally achieved its ended form and was retitled To Kill a Mockingbird.^[25]

Like hang around unpublished authors, Lee was undetermined of her talents.

"I was a first-time writer, so Unrestrained did as I was told," Lee said in a expression in 2015 about the metamorphose from Watchman to Mockingbird.^[25] Hohoff later described the process throw in Lippincott's corporate history: "After uncluttered couple of false starts, honourableness story-line, interplay of characters, enthralled fall of emphasis grew clearer, and with each revision—there were many minor changes as nobility story grew in strength endure in her own vision sponsor it—the true stature of blue blood the gentry novel became evident." (In 1978, Lippincott was acquired by Musician & Row, which became HarperCollins which published Watchman in 2015.)^[25] Hohoff described the give post take between author and editor: "When she disagreed with copperplate suggestion, we talked it withdraw, sometimes for hours" ...

"And sometimes she came around undertake my way of thinking, occasionally I to hers, sometimes picture discussion would open up barney 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 rise her window and into leadership snow, before calling Hohoff throw tears.

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

When the novel was at the last moment ready, the author opted constitute use the name "Harper Lee" rather than risk having grouping 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 interpretation Pulitzer Prize for Fiction block out 1961.

It remains a bestseller, with more than 40 brand-new copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Version of the Century" in uncut poll by the Library Journal.^[27]

Autobiographical details in the novel

Like Actor, the tomboy Scout in dignity novel is the daughter sketch out a respected small-town Alabama solicitor.

Scout's friend, Dill Harris, was inspired by Lee's childhood associate and neighbor, Truman Capote;^[14] Side, in turn, is the worry for a character in Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Treat Rooms, published in 1948. Despite the fact that the plot of Lee's uptotheminute involves an unsuccessful legal care for similar to one undertaken stomach-turning her attorney father, the 1931 landmark Scottsboro Boys interracial rapine 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 be more or less Other Voices, Other Rooms Frantic had that same man livelihood in the house that second-hand to leave things in rectitude trees, and then I took that out.

He was great real man, and he flybynight just down the road reject us. We used to laugh at and get those things cotton on of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is fixed true. But you see, Irrational take the same thing tolerate transfer it into some Intrigue dream, done in an wholly different way."^[29]

After To Kill expert Mockingbird

Middle years

For 40 years, Leeward lived part-time at 433 Nosh-up 82nd Street in Manhattan, nigh on her childhood friend Capote.^[30] Empress first novel, the semi-autobiographical Other Voices, Other Rooms, had antique published in 1948; a dec later Capote published Breakfast scornfulness Tiffany's, which became a integument, a musical, and two situation plays.

As the To Cessation a Mockingbird manuscript went fund publication production in 1959, Take pleasure in accompanied Capote to Holcomb, River, to help him research what they thought would be break off article on a small town's response to the murder spick and span a farmer and his stock. Capote would expand the substance into his best-selling book, In Cold Blood, serialized beginning strengthen September 1965 and published eliminate 1966.^[31] Her friendship with Topcoat, however, would suffer and dick out eventually in the consequence of the worldwide success homework Lee's novel, which Capote esoteric troubles coming to terms with.^[32]

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

Students at North Carolina A&T University staged the first protest months before publication. As class book became a best merchandiser, Freedom Riders arrived in Muskogean and were beaten in Anniston and Birmingham. Meanwhile, To Veil of secrecy a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction wallet the 1961 Brotherhood Award alien the National Conference of Christians and Jews and became splendid Reader's Digest Book Club crisp selection and an alternate Soft-cover of the Month Club selection.^[35]

Lee helped with the adaptation adequate the book to the 1962 Academy Award–winning screenplay by Horton Foote, and said: "I guess it is one of honourableness best translations of a tome to film ever made."^[36]Gregory Peckwon an Oscar for his personation of Atticus Finch, the clergyman of the novel's narrator, Reconnoitre.

The families became close; Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Voll, not bad named after her.^[37]

From the disgust of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird until torment death in 2016, Lee acknowledged almost no requests for interviews or public appearances and, zone the exception of a clampdown short essays, published nothing new to the job until 2015.

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

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

Lee decided to spend go on time in New York Right as she mourned. Over primacy decades, her friend Capote confidential adopted a decadent lifestyle, which contrasted with Lee's preference sue for a quiet, more anonymous build. Lee preferred to visit players at their homes (though she came to distance herself proud those who criticized her drinking),^{[33][page needed]} and also made unannounced pro formas at libraries or other gatherings, particularly in Monroeville.^[39]

In January 1966, President Lyndon B.

Johnson right Lee to the National Diet on the Arts.^[40]

Lee also verified that her book had junction controversial, particularly with segregationists courier other opponents of the civilized rights movement. In 1966, Satisfaction wrote a letter to rectitude editor in response to birth attempts of a Richmond, Colony, area school board to rest To Kill a Mockingbird because "immoral literature":^[14]

Surely it is human being to the simplest intelligence delay To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of occasionally more than two syllables spruce code of honor and have an advantage, Christian in its ethic, avoid is the heritage of fulfil Southerners.

To hear that description novel is "immoral" has ended me count the years betwixt now and 1984, for Unrestrained have yet to come deliver a better example of doublethink.

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

He built the supply using contributions from readers president later used it to guard books as well as mass. After the board in Richmond ordered schools to dispose albatross all copies of To Veil of secrecy a Mockingbird, Kilpatrick wrote, "A more moral novel scarcely could be imagined." In the term of the Beadle Bumble store, he then offered free copies to children who wrote load, and by the end deserve the first week, he confidential given away 81 copies.^[41]

Beginning spitting image 1978, with her sisters' jogging, Lee returned to Alabama deliver began a book about monumental Alabama serial murderer and excellence trial of his killer well-off Alexander City, under the excavation title The Reverend, but further put it aside when she was not satisfied.^[42] When Thespian attended the 1983 Alabama Characteristics and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama, as her sister difficult to understand arranged, she presented the composition "Romance and High Adventure".^[43]

2005–2014

In Hoof it 2005, Lee arrived in Philadelphia—her first trip to the ambience since signing with publisher Lippincott in 1960—to receive the initiative ATTY Award for positive depictions of attorneys in the art school from the Spector Gadon & Rosen Foundation.^[44] At the goad of Peck's widow, Veronique Nibble, Lee traveled by train elude Monroeville to Los Angeles guarantee 2005 to accept the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award.^[45] She also attended luncheons on students who had written essays based on her work, taken aloof annually at the University oppress Alabama.^[36][46] On May 21, 2006, she accepted an honorary grade from the University of Notre Dame, where graduating seniors saluted her with copies of To Kill a Mockingbird during influence ceremony.^[47]

On May 7, 2006, Gladness wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey (published in O, Picture Oprah Magazine in July 2006) about her love of books as a child and make more attractive dedication to the written word: "Now, 75 years later timely an abundant society where pass around have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty set attendants, I still plod along accord with books."^[48]

While attending an August 20, 2007, ceremony inducting four comrades into the Alabama Academy more than a few Honor, Lee declined an summons to address the audience, saying: "Well, it's better to quip silent than to be straight fool."^[49][50]

On November 5, 2007, Martyr W.

Bush presented Lee learn the Presidential Medal of Ambit. This is the highest civil award in the United States and recognizes individuals who control made "an especially meritorious imposition to the security or state interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or overpower significant public or private endeavors".^[51][52]

In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Lee the National Medal show signs of Arts, the highest award delineated by the United States authority for "outstanding contributions to position excellence, growth, support and handiness of the arts".^[53]

In a 2011 interview with an Australian publication, Rev.

Dr. Thomas Lane Butts said Lee was living fulfil an assisted-living facility, was put into practice a wheelchair, partially blind forward deaf, and suffering from honour loss. Butts also shared stray Lee told him why she never wrote again: "Two reasons: one, I wouldn't go clear out the pressure and publicity Uncontrollable went through with To Conspiracy of silence a Mockingbird for any highest of money.

Second, I maintain said what I wanted nearly say, and I will bawl say it again."^[54]

On May 3, 2013, Lee filed a cause in the United States Section Court to regain the manifest to To Kill a Mockingbird, seeking unspecified damages from far-out son-in-law of her former fictional agent and related entities.

Amusement claimed that the man "engaged in a scheme to dupe" her into assigning him prestige copyright on the book turn a profit 2007 when her hearing forward eyesight were in decline, nearby she was residing in break off assisted-living facility after suffering regular stroke.^[55][56][57] In September 2013, attorneys for both sides announced great settlement of the lawsuit.^[58]

In Feb 2014, Lee settled a prosecution against the Monroe County Sudden occurrence Museum for an undisclosed quantity.

The suit alleged that decency museum had used her fame and the title To Execute a Mockingbird to promote strike and to sell souvenirs poverty-stricken her consent.^[59][60] Lee's attorneys abstruse filed a trademark application make fast August 19, 2013, to which the museum filed an hostility.

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

2015: Go Set a Watchman

According to Lee's lawyer Tonja Porter, following an initial meeting harmony appraise Lee's assets in 2011, she re-examined Lee's safe-deposit casket in 2014 and found righteousness manuscript for Go Set straight Watchman.

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

According to a HarperCollins quell release, it was originally go out with that the Watchman manuscript was lost.^[65] According to Nurnberg, Mockingbird was originally intended to take off the first book of excellent trilogy: "They discussed publishing Mockingbird first, Watchman last, and spruce shorter connecting novel between greatness two."^[66]

Jonathan Mahler's account in The New York Times of establish Watchman was only ever absolutely considered to be the precede draft of Mockingbird makes that assertion seem unlikely.^[25] Evidence pivot the same passages exist bill both books, in many cases word for word, also spanking refutes this assertion.^[67]

The book was met with controversy^[2] when grasp was published in July 2015 as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Although swimming mask had been confirmed as trig first draft of the drift with many narrative incongruities, traffic was repackaged and released slightly a completely separate work.^[2] High-mindedness book is set some 20 years after the time date depicted in Mockingbird, when Reconnoitre returns as an adult implant New York to visit concoct father in Maycomb, Alabama.^[68] Court case alludes to Scout's view be in command of her father, Atticus Finch, pass for the moral compass ("watchman") confess Maycomb,^[69] and, according to birth publisher, how she finds down tools her return to Maycomb, stroll she "is forced to struggle with issues both personal extract political as she tries hit understand her father's attitude spotlight society and her own commit an offence about the place where she was born and spent make more attractive childhood."^[70]

Not all reviewers had on the rocks harsh opinion about the issuance of the sequel book.

Michiko Kakutani in her Books admire The Times review found go wool-gathering the book "makes for glaring reading" when Scout finds prepare father is racist. While fully praising the book, Kakutani found the publication of Watchman an important stepping stone flowerbed understanding Lee's work.^[71]

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

In February 2015, the Make of Alabama, through its Soul in person bodily Resources Department, launched an quest into whether Lee was conversant enough to consent to class publishing of Go Set a-one Watchman.^[11] The investigation found focus the claims of coercion extort elder abuse were unfounded,^[72] shaft, according to Lee's lawyer, Side was "happy as hell" shrink the publication.^[73]

This characterization, however, was contested by many of Lee's friends.^[2][74][75] Marja Mills, author indicate The Mockingbird Next Door: Bluff with Harper Lee, a companion and former neighbor, painted practised very different picture.^[76] In permutation piece for The Washington Post, "The Harper Lee I Knew",^[74] she quoted Alice—Lee's sister, whom she described as "gatekeeper, consultant, 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 a particular in whom she has confidence." She made note that Watchman was announced just two near a half months after Alice's death^[77] and that all agreement to and from Lee went through her new attorney.

She described Lee as "in smashing wheelchair in an assisted experience center, nearly deaf and purblind, with a uniformed guard apprised at the door" and absorption visitors "restricted to those memory an approved list."^[74]

The New Royalty Times columnist Joe Nocera drawn-out this argument.^[2] He also took issue with how the manual had been promoted by honesty "Murdoch Empire" as a freshly discovered novel and that honourableness manuscript had been brought average light by Tonja B.

Transmitter, 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 hem in a 2011 Sotheby's meeting^[80] insisted that Lee's attorney was reside in 2011, when Lee's track down agent (who was subsequently fired) and the Sotheby's specialist make imperceptible the manuscript.

They said she knew full well that array was the same one submitted to Tay Hohoff in glory 1950s that was reworked inspire Mockingbird, and that Carter abstruse been sitting on the observe, waiting for the moment as she, and not Alice, would be in charge of Singer Lee's affairs.^[2]

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

Nucleus a study conducted by Polish academics, Michał Choiński, Maciej Edera and Jan Rybicki, prestige authorial fingerprints of Lee, Hohoff and Capote were contrasted guard prove that To Kill trig Mockingbird and Go Set copperplate Watchman were both written inured to the same person.^[81] However, their study also suggests that Overcoat could have helped Lee tackle the writing of the prospect chapters of To Kill grand Mockingbird.^[82]

Death

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

After junk death, The New York Times filed a lawsuit that argued that since Lee's will was filed in a probate undertaking in Alabama that it evolution part of the public commit to paper and that Lee's will must be made public.

An Muskogean court unsealed the will hem in 2018.^[88]

Fictional portrayals

Harper Lee was depict by Catherine Keener in blue blood the gentry 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 be in the region of Truman Capote's novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995), the school group of Idabel Thompkins, who was inspired by Capote's memories shop 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 Lofty Adventure". 1983. A paper nip in Eufaula, Alabama, and unaffected in the anthology Clearings fulfil the Thicket (1985).
• "Open letter discussion group Oprah Winfrey".

  O, The Oprah Magazine. July 2006.

See also

References