HARPER LEE, CLASSIC MODERN OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Harper Lee, the American novelist who was born on a day like today in 1926.

Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926-February 19, 2016) was an American novelist whose 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and became a classic of modern American literature. She assisted her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). Her second and final novel, Go Set a Watchman, was an earlier draft of Mockingbird, set at a later date, that was published in July 2015 as a sequel.

The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbours in Monroeville, Alabama, as well as a childhood event that occurred near her hometown in 1936. The novel deals with racist attitudes and the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s as depicted through the eyes of two children.

Lee received numerous accolades and honorary degrees, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, which was awarded for her contribution to literature.

Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama.

In 1949, Lee moved to New York City and took jobs -first at a bookstore, then as an airline reservation agent- while writing in her spare time. After publishing several long stories, Lee found an agent in November 1956; Maurice Crain would become a friend until his death decades later. The following month, at Michael Brown's East 50th Street townhouse, friends gave Lee a gift of a year's wages with a note: You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.

In the spring of 1957, a 31-year-old Lee delivered the manuscript for Go Set a Watchman to Crain to send out to publishers, including the now-defunct J. B. Lippincott Company, which eventually bought it. At Lippincott, the novel fell into the hands of Tay Hohoff. Hohoff was impressed. [T]he spark of the true writer flashed in every line, she would later recount in a corporate history of Lippincott. But as Hohoff saw it, the manuscript was by no means fit for publication. It was, as she described it, more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel. During the next couple of years, she led Lee from one draft to the next until the book finally achieved its finished form and was retitled To Kill a Mockingbird.

Like many unpublished authors, Lee was unsure of her talents. I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told, Lee said in a statement in 2015 about the evolution from Watchman to Mockingbird. Hohoff later described the process in Lippincott's corporate history: After a couple of false starts, the story-line, interplay of characters, and fall of emphasis grew clearer, and with each revision -there were many minor changes as the story grew in strength and in her own vision of it- the true stature of the novel became evident. 

In 1978, Lippincott was acquired by Harper & Row, which became HarperCollins which published Watchman in 2015.

Hohoff described the give and take between author and editor: When she disagreed with a suggestion, we talked it out, sometimes for hours ... And sometimes she came around to my way of thinking, sometimes I to hers, sometimes the discussion would open up an entirely new line of country.

One winter night, as Charles J. Shields recounts in Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, Lee threw her manuscript out her window and into the snow, before calling Hohoff in tears. Shields recollected that Tay told her to march outside immediately and pick up the pages.

When the novel was finally ready, the author opted to use the name Harper Lee rather than risk having her first name Nelle be misidentified as Nellie.

Published July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller, with more than 40 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted Best Novel of the Century in a poll by the Library Journal.

Lee died in her sleep on the morning of February 19, 2016, aged 89. Prior to her death, she lived in Monroeville, Alabama.

On February 20, her funeral was held at First United Methodist Church in Monroeville. The service was attended by close family and friends, and the eulogy was given by Wayne Flynt.

After her death, The New York Times filed a lawsuit that argued that since Lee's will was filed in a probate court in Alabama that it is part of the public record and that Lee's will should be made public. An Alabama court unsealed the will in 2018.

More information: 'To Kill a Mockingbird' A Harper Lee's Masterpiece

You never really understand a person
until you consider things from his point of view.

Harper Lee