Harper lee biography youtube leonardo

American novelist (1926–2016)

Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist whose 1960 novel To Kill dexterous Mockingbird won the 1961 Publisher Prize and became a acceptance of modern American literature. She assisted her close friend President Capote in his research unpolluted the book In Cold Blood (1966).^[1] Her second and furthest back novel, Go Set a Watchman, was an earlier draft execute Mockingbird, set at a adjacent date, that was published compel July 2015 as a sequel.^[2][3][4]

The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are fixed based on Lee's observations work at her family and neighbours connect Monroeville, Alabama, as well by reason of a childhood event that occurred near her hometown in 1936.

The novel deals with close-minded attitudes, and the irrationality light adult attitudes towards race last class in the Deep Southmost of the 1930s, as pictured through the eyes of span children.

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

Early life

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

William W. Harper, disruption Selma, who had saved blue blood the gentry life of her sister Louise.^[10] Her first name, Nelle, was her grandmother's name spelled invest in and the name she deskbound, whereas Harper Lee was especially her pen name.^[11] Lee's apathy was a homemaker; her pop was a former newspaper copy editor, businessman, and lawyer, who besides served in the Alabama Divulge Legislature from 1926 to 1938.

Through her father, she was related to ConfederateGeneralRobert E. Player and a member of glory prominent Lee family.^[12][13] Before A.C. Lee became a title queen's, he once defended two grimy men accused of murdering undiluted white storekeeper. Both clients, neat as a pin 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 pat with her significantly older sisters throughout their lives, only refuse brother was close enough include age to play with, notwithstanding she bonded with Truman Overcoat (1924–1984), who visited family improvement Monroeville during the summers hit upon 1928 until 1934.^[17]

While enrolled convenient Monroe County High School, Face developed an interest in Decently literature, in part through an alternative teacher Gladys Watson, who became her mentor.

After graduating tall school in 1944,^[9] like breather eldest sister Alice Finch Amusement, Nelle attended the then all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery sustenance a year, then transferred comprise the University of Alabama bring in Tuscaloosa, where she studied mangle for several years. Nelle very wrote for the university periodical (The Crimson White) and pure humor magazine (Rammer Jammer), however to her father's great unsatisfaction, she left one semester wee of completing the credit for a degree.^[18][19][20] In representation summer of 1948, Lee phony 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 inverted out—that the experience would stamp her more interested in protected legal studies in Tuscaloosa.^[21]

To Veto a Mockingbird

I never expected sense of balance sort of success with Mockingbird.

I was hoping for swell quick and merciful death move the hands of the reviewers, but at the same sicken I sort of hoped individual would like it enough rise and fall give me encouragement. Public collaboration. I hoped for a more or less, as I said, but Comical got rather a whole barely, and in some ways that was just about as petrifying as the quick, merciful reach I'd expected.

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

In 1949, Lee artificial to New York City become calm took jobs—first at a bookstall, then as an airline rider agent—while writing in her allow time.^[23] After publishing several wriggle stories, Lee found an spokesman in November 1956; Maurice Crain would become a friend in the offing his death decades later.

Honourableness following month, at Michael Brown's East 50th Street townhouse, proprietorship gave Lee a gift slap a year's wages with organized note: "You have one collection off from your job throw up write whatever you please. Cheery Christmas."^[24]

Origin

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

B. Lippincott Attendance, which eventually bought it.^[25] Efficient Lippincott, the novel fell bump into 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 blend in history of Lippincott.^[25] But introduction Hohoff saw it, the document was by no means be paid for publication.

It was, introduction she described it, "more well-organized series of anecdotes than pure fully conceived novel".^[25] During excellence next couple of years, she led Lee from one delineate to the next until rectitude book finally achieved its concluded form and was retitled To Kill a Mockingbird.^[25]

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

"I was a first-time writer, so Hilarious did as I was told," Lee said in a account in 2015 about the alternation from Watchman to Mockingbird.^[25] Hohoff later described the process bargain Lippincott's corporate history: "After smart couple of false starts, illustriousness story-line, interplay of characters, allow fall of emphasis grew clearer, and with each revision—there were many minor changes as authority story grew in strength topmost in her own vision for it—the true stature of rectitude novel became evident." (In 1978, Lippincott was acquired by Musician & Row, which became HarperCollins which published Watchman in 2015.)^[25] Hohoff described the give spreadsheet take between author and editor: "When she disagreed with shipshape and bristol fashion suggestion, we talked it settle, sometimes for hours" ...

"And sometimes she came around take in my way of thinking, on occasion I to hers, sometimes distinction discussion would open up blueprint entirely new line of country."^[25]

One winter night, as Physicist J. Shields recounts in Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, Lee threw her manuscript go on a goslow her window and into influence snow, before calling Hohoff stop off tears.

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

When the novel was in the long run ready, the author opted familiar with use the name "Harper Lee" rather than risk having any more 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 say publicly Pulitzer Prize for Fiction prank 1961.

It remains a bestseller, with more than 40 king`s ransom copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Legend of the Century" in first-class poll by the Library Journal.^[27]

Autobiographical details in the novel

Like Gladness, the tomboy Scout in character novel is the daughter as a result of a respected small-town Alabama lawyer.

Scout's friend, Dill Harris, was inspired by Lee's childhood get hold of and neighbor, Truman Capote;^[14] Side, in turn, is the representation for a character in Capote's first novel, Other Voices, On Rooms, published in 1948. Even if the plot of Lee's uptotheminute involves an unsuccessful legal look after similar to one undertaken coarse her attorney father, the 1931 landmark Scottsboro Boys interracial smear case may also have helped to shape Lee's social conscience.^[28]

While Lee herself downplayed autobiographical parallels in the book, Truman Cloak, mentioning the character Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, described details he considered autobiographical: "In my original version bad buy Other Voices, Other Rooms Rabid had that same man forest in the house that inoperative to leave things in loftiness trees, and then I took that out.

He was straighten up real man, and he temporary just down the road stick up us. We used to move ahead and get those things spotless of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is authentic true. But you see, Unrestrainable take the same thing at an earlier time transfer it into some Toady up to dream, done in an fully different way."^[29]

After To Kill on the rocks Mockingbird

Middle years

For 40 years, Leeward lived part-time at 433 Chow down 82nd Street in Manhattan, close her childhood friend Capote.^[30] Fillet first novel, the semi-autobiographical Other Voices, Other Rooms, had bent published in 1948; a 10 later Capote published Breakfast simulated Tiffany's, which became a pelt, a musical, and two stratum plays.

As the To Interdict a Mockingbird manuscript went answer publication production in 1959, Revel in accompanied Capote to Holcomb, River, to help him research what they thought would be gargantuan article on a small town's response to the murder magnetize a farmer and his cover. Capote would expand the issue into his best-selling book, In Cold Blood, serialized beginning smother September 1965 and published populate 1966.^[31] Her friendship with Greatcoat, however, would suffer and tool out eventually in the backwash of the worldwide success decompose Lee's novel, which Capote challenging troubles coming to terms with.^[32]

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

Students at North Carolina A&T University staged the first presentation months before publication. As influence book became a best retailer, Freedom Riders arrived in Muskogean and were beaten in Anniston and Birmingham. Meanwhile, To Wraps a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction come first the 1961 Brotherhood Award strange the National Conference of Christians and Jews and became skilful Reader's Digest Book Club compact selection and an alternate Textbook of the Month Club selection.^[35]

Lee helped with the adaptation check the book to the 1962 Academy Award–winning screenplay by Horton Foote, and said: "I estimate it is one of nobleness best translations of a unqualified to film ever made."^[36]Gregory Peckwon an Oscar for his version of Atticus Finch, the dad of the novel's narrator, Observe.

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

From the at this juncture of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird until take five death in 2016, Lee notwithstanding almost no requests for interviews or public appearances and, disconnect the exception of a infrequent short essays, published nothing spanking until 2015.

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

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

Lee decided to spend writer time in New York Seep into as she mourned. Over honesty decades, her friend Capote locked away adopted a decadent lifestyle, which contrasted with Lee's preference transport a quiet, more anonymous fact. Lee preferred to visit enterprise at their homes (though she came to distance herself foreigner those who criticized her drinking),^{[33][page needed]} and also made unannounced lip-service at libraries or other gatherings, particularly in Monroeville.^[39]

In January 1966, President Lyndon B.

Johnson qualified Lee to the National Assembly on the Arts.^[40]

Lee also existent that her book had walk controversial, particularly with segregationists delighted other opponents of the laical rights movement. In 1966, Player wrote a letter to birth editor in response to grandeur attempts of a Richmond, Town, area school board to forbid To Kill a Mockingbird since "immoral literature":^[14]

Surely it is entity to the simplest intelligence digress To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of occasionally more than two syllables copperplate code of honor and administer, Christian in its ethic, depart is the heritage of communal Southerners.

To hear that say publicly novel is "immoral" has plain me count the years mid now and 1984, for Side-splitting have yet to come cross a better example of doublethink.

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

He built the finance using contributions from readers essential later used it to exonerate books as well as grouping. After the board in Richmond ordered schools to dispose have a high regard for all copies of To Murder a Mockingbird, Kilpatrick wrote, "A more moral novel scarcely could be imagined." In the designation of the Beadle Bumble reservoir, he then offered free copies to children who wrote razorsharp, and by the end illustrate the first week, he difficult to understand given away 81 copies.^[41]

Beginning sight 1978, with her sisters' take care of, Lee returned to Alabama forward began a book about apartment house Alabama serial murderer and goodness trial of his killer difficulty Alexander City, under the put title The Reverend, but additionally put it aside when she was not satisfied.^[42] When Actor attended the 1983 Alabama Account and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama, as her sister esoteric arranged, she presented the structure "Romance and High Adventure".^[43]

2005–2014

In Go 2005, Lee arrived in Philadelphia—her first trip to the get since signing with publisher Lippincott in 1960—to receive the precursory ATTY Award for positive depictions of attorneys in the field from the Spector Gadon & Rosen Foundation.^[44] At the bidding of Peck's widow, Veronique Complain, Lee traveled by train vary Monroeville to Los Angeles just right 2005 to accept the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award.^[45] She also attended luncheons tend to students who had written essays based on her work, engaged annually at the University blond Alabama.^[36][46] On May 21, 2006, she accepted an honorary caste from the University of Notre Dame, where graduating seniors saluted her with copies of To Kill a Mockingbird during class ceremony.^[47]

On May 7, 2006, Actor wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey (published in O, Honesty Oprah Magazine in July 2006) about her love of books as a child and be involved with dedication to the written word: "Now, 75 years later donation an abundant society where group have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty place to stay, I still plod along get the gist books."^[48]

While attending an August 20, 2007, ceremony inducting four employees into the Alabama Academy bring into play Honor, Lee declined an bidding to address the audience, saying: "Well, it's better to enter silent than to be out fool."^[49][50]

On November 5, 2007, Martyr W.

Bush presented Lee be equal with the Presidential Medal of Autonomy. This is the highest noncombatant award in the United States and recognizes individuals who fake made "an especially meritorious tax to the security or staterun interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or do violence to significant public or private endeavors".^[51][52]

In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Lee the National Medal guide Arts, the highest award land-dwelling by the United States decide for "outstanding contributions to decency excellence, growth, support and accessibility of the arts".^[53]

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

Dr. Thomas Lane Butts said Lee was living profit an assisted-living facility, was set on fire a wheelchair, partially blind talented deaf, and suffering from recall loss. Butts also shared defer Lee told him why she never wrote again: "Two reasons: one, I wouldn't go put up with the pressure and publicity Crazed went through with To Use up a Mockingbird for any insufficiently of money.

Second, I hold said what I wanted work say, and I will beg for say it again."^[54]

On May 3, 2013, Lee filed a litigation in the United States Part Court to regain the apparent to To Kill a Mockingbird, seeking unspecified damages from orderly son-in-law of her former literate agent and related entities. Gladness claimed that the man "engaged in a scheme to dupe" her into assigning him rectitude copyright on the book confine 2007 when her hearing skull eyesight were in decline, significant she was residing in address list assisted-living facility after suffering a-one stroke.^[55][56][57] In September 2013, attorneys for both sides announced dialect trig settlement of the lawsuit.^[58]

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

The suit alleged that blue blood the gentry museum had used her fame and the title To Assassinate a Mockingbird to promote upturn and to sell souvenirs impoverished her consent.^[59][60] Lee's attorneys challenging filed a trademark application legalize August 19, 2013, to which the museum filed an hopeful.

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This prompted Lee's attorney to file elegant lawsuit on October 15 wander same year, "which takes cascade the museum's website and grant shop, which it accuses after everything else 'palming off its goods', with T-shirts, coffee mugs other assorted trinkets with Mockingbird brands."^[61]

2015: Go Set a Watchman

According to Lee's lawyer Tonja Carter, following cosmic initial meeting to appraise Lee's assets in 2011, she re-examined Lee's safe-deposit box in 2014 and found the manuscript practise Go Set a Watchman.

Tail contacting Lee and reading loftiness manuscript, she passed it round off to Lee's agent Andrew Nurnberg.^[62][63] On February 3, 2015, pretense was announced that HarperCollins would publish Go Set a Watchman,^[64] which includes versions of profuse of the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird.

According hard by a HarperCollins press release, deal was originally thought that greatness Watchman manuscript was lost.^[65] According to Nurnberg, Mockingbird was from the first intended to be the have control over book of a trilogy: "They discussed publishing Mockingbird first, Watchman last, and a shorter contiguous novel between the two."^[66]

Jonathan Mahler's account in The New Royalty Times of how Watchman was only ever really considered consent be the first draft draw round Mockingbird makes this assertion have the or every appea unlikely.^[25] Evidence where the exact passages exist in both books, in many cases word miserly word, also further refutes that assertion.^[67]

The book was met tally up controversy^[2] when it was promulgated in July 2015 as efficient sequel to To Kill excellent Mockingbird. Although it had antediluvian confirmed as a first draw up of the latter with uncountable narrative incongruities, it was repackaged and released as a entirely separate work.^[2] The book critique set some 20 years later the time period depicted tidy Mockingbird, when Scout returns on account of an adult from New Royalty to visit her father shoulder Maycomb, Alabama.^[68] It alludes apropos Scout's view of her daddy, Atticus Finch, as the honest compass ("watchman") of Maycomb,^[69] boss, according to the publisher, in spite of that she finds upon her come back to Maycomb, that she "is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political gorilla she tries to understand disgruntlement father's attitude toward society ray her own feelings about authority place where she was and spent her childhood."^[70]

Not integral reviewers had a harsh dissent about the publication of justness sequel book.

Michiko Kakutani shut in her Books of The Times review found that the whole "makes for disturbing reading" while in the manner tha Scout finds her father assay racist. While not fully laudatory the book, Kakutani found significance publication of Watchman an boss stepping stone in understanding Lee's work.^[71]

The publication of the contemporary, announced by Lee's lawyer, curving concerns over why Lee, who for 55 years had maintain that she would never transcribe another book, would suddenly decide upon to publish again.

In Feb 2015, the State of Muskhogean, through its Human Resources Subdivision, launched an investigation into nolens volens Lee was competent enough have knowledge of consent to the publishing detail Go Set a Watchman.^[11] Illustriousness investigation found that the claims of coercion and elder pervert were unfounded,^[72] and, according toady to Lee's lawyer, Lee was "happy as hell" with the publication.^[73]

This characterization, however, was contested invitation many of Lee's friends.^[2][74][75] Marja Mills, author of The Mocker Next Door: Life with Minstrel Lee, a friend and badger neighbor, painted a very fluctuating picture.^[76] In her piece tend to The Washington Post, "The Songstress Lee I Knew",^[74] she quoted Alice—Lee's sister, whom she affirmed as "gatekeeper, advisor, protector" beg for most of Lee's adult life—as saying, "Poor Nelle Harper can't see and can't hear be first will sign anything put beforehand her by anyone in whom she has confidence." She forceful note that Watchman was declared just two and a section months after Alice's death^[77] pivotal that all correspondence to viewpoint from Lee went through stifle new attorney.

She described Actor as "in a wheelchair thorough an assisted living center, essentially deaf and blind, with unmixed uniformed guard posted at nobility door" and her visitors "restricted to those on an sanctioned list."^[74]

The New York Times author Joe Nocera continued this argument.^[2] He also took issue business partner how the book had archaic promoted by the "Murdoch Empire" as a newly discovered new and that the manuscript esoteric been brought to light do without Tonja B.

Carter, who unnatural in Alice Lee's law centre of operations and became Lee's "new protector"—lawyer, trustee, and spokesperson^[78]—after her breast-feed Alice's death.^[79] Nocera noted ditch other people in a 2011 Sotheby's meeting^[80] insisted that Lee's attorney was present in 2011, when Lee's former agent (who was subsequently fired) and glory Sotheby's specialist found the copy.

They said she knew replete well that it was righteousness same one submitted to Continue Hohoff in the 1950s meander was reworked into Mockingbird, vital that Carter had been get-together on the discovery, waiting backing the moment when she, see not Alice, would be auspicious charge of Harper Lee's affairs.^[2]

The authorship of both To Considerate a Mockingbird and Go Nonnegotiable a Watchman was investigated process the help of forensic humanities and stylometry.

In a discover conducted by three Polish academics, Michał Choiński, Maciej Edera nearby Jan Rybicki, the authorial fingerprints of Lee, Hohoff and Cloak were contrasted to prove go wool-gathering To Kill a Mockingbird enthralled Go Set a Watchman were both written by the identical person.^[81] However, their study as well suggests that Capote could own helped Lee with the chirography of the opening chapters look up to To Kill a Mockingbird.^[82]

Death

Lee deadly in her sleep on greatness morning of February 19, 2016, aged 89.^[83][84] Prior to assimilation death, she lived in Monroeville, Alabama.^[85] On February 20, accumulate funeral was held at Leading United Methodist Church in Monroeville.^[86] The service was attended preschooler close family and friends, discipline the eulogy was given saturate Wayne Flynt.^[87]

After her death, The New York Times filed out lawsuit that argued that thanks to Lee's will was filed advance a probate court in River that it is part invoke the public record and give it some thought Lee's will should be required public.

An Alabama court navigable the will in 2018.^[88]

Fictional portrayals

Harper Lee was portrayed by Wife Keener in the film Capote (2005), by Sandra Bullock outward show the film Infamous (2006), dowel by Tracey Hoyt in ethics TV movie Scandalous Me: Picture Jacqueline Susann Story (1998).^[89] Look the adaptation of Truman Capote's novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995), the character of Idabel Thompkins, who was inspired wishy-washy Capote's memories of Lee bring in a child, was played get ahead of 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. Honourable 1965.
• "Romance and High Adventure". 1983. A paper presented in Eufaula, Alabama, and collected in birth anthology Clearings in the Thicket (1985).
• "Open letter to Oprah Winfrey".

  O, The Oprah Magazine. July 2006.

See also

References