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Harper Lee
“[A
writer] should write about what he knows and write truthfully.”
—Harper Lee
Harper Lee
has followed her own advice in writing about what she knows. In
fact, critics have noted many parallels between the novel and Lee's
early life. "Nelle" Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926,
the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham
Finch Lee. She grew up in Monroeville, a small town in southwest
Alabama. Her father was a lawyer who also served in the state legislature
from 1926-1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader.
After she attended public school in Monroeville she attended Huntingdon
College, a private school for women in Montgomery for a year and
then transferred to the University of Alabama. After graduation,
Lee studied at Oxford University. She returned to the University
of Alabama to study law but withdrew six months before graduation.
She moved to New York in 1949 and worked as a reservations
clerk for Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways. While
in New York, she wrote several essays and short stories but none
were published. Her agent encouraged her to develop one short story
into a novel. In order to complete it, Lee quit working and was
supported by friends who believed in her work. In 1957, she submitted
the manuscript to J. B. Lippincott Company. Although editors found
the work too episodic, they saw promise in the book and encouraged
Lee to rewrite it. In 1960, with the help of Lippincott editor Tay
Hohoff, To Kill a Mockingbird was published.
To Kill a Mockingbird became an instant
popular success. A year after the novel was published, 500,000 copies
had been sold and it had been translated into ten languages. Critical
reviews of the novel were mixed. It was only after the success of
the film adaptation in 1962 that many critics reconsidered To
Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird was honoured with
many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and
was made into a film in 1962 starring Gregory Peck. The film was
nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It actually
was honoured with three awards: Gregory Peck won the Best Actor
Award, Horton Foote won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar and a
design team was awarded an Oscar for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration
B/W. Lee worked as a consultant on the screenplay adaptation of
the novel.
Author Truman Capote was Lee's next-door neighbour
from 1928 to 1933. In 1959 Lee and Capote travelled to Garden City,
Kansas, to research the Clutter family murders for his work, In
Cold Blood (1965). Capote dedicated In Cold Blood to Lee and
his partner Jack Dunphy. Lee was the inspiration for the character
Idabel in Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He in
turn clearly influenced her character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Harper Lee divides her time between New York and
her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama where her sister Alice Lee
practices law. Though she has published no other work of fiction,
this novel continues to have a strong impact on successive generations
of readers.
Read more about Harper
Lee:
Harper
Lee Biography
Roy
Newquist Interviews Harper Lee
1963
Chicago Press Call 1963 interview with Harper Lee
Harper
Lee. Biography from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harper
Lee Biography. Includes colour portrait. Information about Nelle
Harper Lee and her family by Jane Kansas, NS Canada. See also Monroeville
Alabama and Other
Work by Harper Lee
(Nelle)
Harper Lee (1926-)
Nelle
Harper Lee Biography from PlanetPapers
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