To KILL A MockingbirdHARPER LEE

Nelle Harper Lee

Born April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, AL.

Youngest of 4 children.

Grew up during Great Depression.

Extremely bright and creative but hated school.

Tomboy.

Family

Father: A.C. Lee, attorney, banker, state legislator, and owner of Monroe Journal.

Mother: Frances Cunningham Finch Lee, homemaker. Well-educated, suffered from mental illness.

Lee and Finch families both prominent in town.

Housekeeper: Hattie Belle Clausell. Helped raise the children.

Siblings: Alice, Louise, Edwin.

Monroeville

First electricity in the town in 1923.

Everyone was poor in the 1930s. Everyone hunted to eat.

Total segregation in 1930s: “You didn’t hate anybody. I wasn’t taught to hate Blacks. They had their society and we had ours. The two didn’t mix. That’s just the way it was.”

Last public hanging in 1927.

Monroeville

About 40 years ago, separate waiting rooms at the dentist’s office.

About 30 years ago, Black customers could not go inside the local diner -- had to go to the back door.

“Not a caste system per se” -- but everyone knew their place. Part of growing up was learning your place in society. Goes for race and class.

The Courthouse

Original courthouse built in 1852 of local clay bricks hand-formed by slave labor; burned down.

Rebuilt in 1903 for $26,000. This is where A.C. Lee practiced law.

William Jennings Bryant and George Washington Carver spoke there.

Not used after 1963; left to decay.

Was to be torn down in 1970s, but saved and put on National Historic Register in 1973.

Restored at a cost of $1.5 million in 1991.

Truman

Truman Streckfus Persons. As an adult, took the name Truman Capote.

Lived with the Faulks, his mother’s cousins, next door to Lees.

Small for his age, sensitive, often bullied in school.

Nelle and Truman

Nelle and Truman didn’t fit in--bound together “by a common anguish” (Lee) or “an apartness” (Capote).

“We didn’t have much money…We didn’t have toys…so the result was that we lived in our imaginations most of the time.”

Nelle and Truman

Given a black Underwood No. 5 typewriter.

Read, wrote, and acted out stories.

Loved to spy on and write about their neighbors.

Education

High School:

Greatly admired Gladys Watson, her English teacher. Introduced her to literature and the rigors of serious writing. Lived across the street.

College:

Spent one year at Huntingdon College in 1944.

Emulated international affairs professor Irene Munro, who emphasized critical thinking.

Wrote short fiction for Huntress, the campus newspaper.

Stories about “racial prejudice and justice” (Shields 79).

Education

Transferred to University of Alabama with intentions of following in A.C. Lee’s and Alice Lee’s footsteps by studying law.

Attended 1945-1949.

Joined Chi Omega sorority. Didn’t fit in.

Possibly studied abroad at Oxford University for 1 year.

Was Editor-in-Chief for Rammer Jammer, the campus humor magazine.

Harper Lee

Hated studying law. In 1949, decided to move to New York to write, against her father’s wishes.

Left school 6 months prior to graduation.

Capote also in New York. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, published in 1948.

Harper Lee

Worked at the airport and at bookstores in New York.

Friends Michael and Joy Brown gave her money to support herself for a year as a Christmas gift in 1956.

Spent the year writing; kept to a rigid routine.

Civil Rights in Monroeville

Forced integration of public schools in 1970 -- disliked by both communities.

Most civil rights activities kept underground for fear of the KKK.

Klan not “busted up” until 1980s. Local Black high school band invited to march in the Christmas parade; Klan protested and made threats. Chamber of Commerce canceled the parade. “No problems with the Klan since.”

Harper Lee

Annie Laurie Williams and Maurice Crain are her agents; Tay Hohoff her editor.

Published by J.B. Lippincott.

Worked with publisher on revisions for 2.5 years. At one point, threw the entire manuscript out the window. Hohoff ordered her to “‘march outside immediately and pick up the pages.’”

With publication, took on name Harper Lee.

Capote contributed blurb for review copy: “Someone rare has written this very fine first novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life, and the warmest, most authentic humor. A touching book, and so funny, so likeable.”

The Book

Published on July 11, 1960.

Received tremendous attention even before official publication.

Remained on various bestseller lists for 88 weeks.

Sold 2.5 million copies in first year.

Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

Monroeville reactions

A.C. Lee and Alice Lee fiercely protective of Nelle. Had to get through Alice to get to Nelle.

Everyone was sure they knew who each of the characters in the book were.

Was threatened with lawsuit by Boulware family.

Nelle wanted to keep reality separate from fiction; denied any connection between Monroeville and Maycomb. Only delcaration she ever made was that AC Lee was the inspiration for Atticus.

“We protect her....she’s been hounded so much.”

Reviews of TKAM

Time: “By the time she ends her first-person account at the age of nine, she has learned that people must be judged, but only slowly and thoughtfully.”

Washington Post: “A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere 18 ounces of new fiction bearing the title To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The Atlantic: “pleasant, undemanding reading.”

The Film

Released on Christmas Day 1962.

Lee asked to write screenplay but said no.

Horton Foote wrote screenplay; Lee greatly admired his adaptation.

Novel sent to Gregory Peck; he read it in one night and agreed to be Atticus Finch.

The Film

Nominated for 8 Academy Awards and won 3 in 1963.

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch nominated and won Best Actor in Leading Role.

Mary Badham as Scout nominated for Best Actress in Supporting Role.

Also won for Best Art Direction-Set Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Film

Harper and Truman Successful writer; lived public

life; loved fame.

Rumors he wrote TKAM. Gladys Burkett: “I proofed that book; don’t ever believe it.”

Researched a murder in rural Kansas for 4 years to write In Cold Blood (1966).

Lee assisted with research and writing but received no credit.

Friendship dissolved over the years.

Truman’s Black and White Ball -- Harper did not attend, said “I didn’t want to.”

Other Publications

The novel that was never finished….

The Long Goodbye

The non-fiction project about Reverend W.M. Maxwell, an Alabama man who murdered his relatives for the insurance money…

The Reverend

“Love—In Other Words” in Vogue Magazine, 1961.

“Christmas to Me” in McCall's Magazine in 1961.

“When Children Discover America” in McCall's Magazine, 1965.

In one of her last interviews in 1964, Lee said she wanted to write several novels about “’small-town middle-class southern life…because I believe that there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing.’”

“‘People in the press have asked me if this book is descriptive of

own childhood, or of my own family. Is this very important? I am simply one who had time and chance to write. I was that person before, and

no one in the press much cared about the details of my life. I am yet that same person now, who only misses

her former anonymity.’”

And then...

nothing.

Lee in O Magazine - July 2006

First significant publication since TKAM and two essays published in 1961.

About how she became a reader as a child.

“Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.”

To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Contest

Sponsored annually by University of Alabama since 2001, the year Lee was inducted into Alabama Academy of Honor.

Open to Alabama high school students.

Lee attends the awards ceremony every year.

Presidential Medal of Freedom

November 5, 2007.

Highest honor given to a civilian by the U.S. government.

White House press release: “At a critical moment in our history, her beautiful book, To Kill a Mockingbird, helped focus the Nation on the turbulent struggle for equality.”

The Play

Adaptation written by Christopher Segel.

Play produced by townspeople every spring.

Takes place on the Courthouse lawns and in the Courthouse.

Harper Lee never attends.

Has been performed in Israel, England, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in DC, and all over Alabama.

Recent “Sightings”

Capote (2005) -- Catherine Keener as Harper Lee.

After seeing film, Lee called Keener to say how much she liked the movie.

Keener nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Recent “Sightings”

Infamous (2006) -- Sandra Bullock as Lee.

Bullock studied Lee’s notes from her work with Capote on microfiche at New York Public Library.

LegacyOver 30,000,000 copies

sold.

In more than 40 languages.

1991 “Survey of Lifetime Reading Habits” by the Book-of-the-Month Club and Library of Congress’s Center for the Book found that “among the books mentioned by its 5,000 respondents, Harper Lee’s TKM was second only to the Bible in being ‘most often cited as making a difference’ in people’s lives” (Johnson 14).

Works Cited

Johnson, Claudia. “The Secret Courts of Men’s Hearts: Code and Law in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.” Studies in American Fiction 19 (1991): 129-39.

Shields, Charles J. Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006.

“To Kill a Mockingbird.” National Endowment for the Arts: The Big Read. 2006-2008. 11 Apr. 2008 http://www.neabigread.org/books/mockingbird/index.php.

“Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird, a Novel by Harper Lee.” A research Guide for Students. 1998-2008. 11 Apr. 2008 http://aresearchguide.com/mock.html#harper.