Harper+Lee



Harper Lee, (whose full name is Nelle Harper Lee) was born in Monroeville Alabama in 1926, and was the youngest of her three siblings. Her parents were Amasa Coleman Lee and Francis Cunningham Finch. Harper was a tom boy in her youth, and was bestfriends through elementary school with a young Trueman Capote, who was also her next door neighbor. Harper attended Monroe County High School in Monroeville, and graduated in 1944. She then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama from the years 1945 to 1949, and was in the Chi Omega sorority. Harper wrote for a campus comedy magazine called Rammer Jammer while she was in college. Harper was interested in law since she was a small child, when a case arose about 2 while women being raped by 9 black men. The men, who were almost lynched before the trial, did not receive the services of a lawyer until the day of the trial. All but one, who was a 12 year old boy, were sentenced to death, despite medical evidence that the 2 women's allegations were dishonest, and they had not been raped. The men were all found not guilty later on, but these events had a major impact on Harper, and would even go on to inspire some of the events in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. She didn't acquire her degree in law, but did study for a year in Oxford, England before moving to a cold-water only apartment in New York City. There, she worked as a reservation clerk for Eastern Airlines. Soon after this, she devoted her life to a writing career, and wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird- which she published at age 34 (July 11, 1960). The novel went on to win the Pulitzer during its 41st week on the best seller list. In 2001, Lee was inducted into the Alabama Academy of honor. Then, in 2006, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Notre Dame. Harper Lee was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. As you can see, Nelle Harper Lee became a very accomplished writer due to her dedication, and hard work.



"Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read. Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that “To Kill a Mockingbird” spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink. I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice"
 * After Lee finished her work on To Kill A Mocking Bird, she went with Tuman Capote, another author, to Holcomb, Kansas. She did this to assist him with researching a small town's response to the murder of a farmer and his family. Capote actually ended up converting this research into a best selling book- In Cold Blood.
 * On another note, Harper Lee has areed to little to no interviews or public appearances. And besides a few minor short essays, she has not published any more work. She did work on a second novel—//The Long Goodbye//—but eventually filed it away, unfinished and unsatisfied with her work. Lee began a factual book about an Alabama murder during the mid-1980s, but also put it aside when she was not satisfied. Due to her withdrawel from public life, people suspected that new publications were on the way. However, that was not the case.
 * Once Lee had watched the movie interpretation of To Kill A Mocking Bird, she said in response: "I think it is one of the best translations of a book to film ever made".
 * Lee showed her feistiness in her 1966 letter to the editor in response to the attempts of a Richmond, Virginia area school board to ban //To Kill a Mockingbird// as "immoral literature":
 * When Lee attended the 1983 Alabama History and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama, she presented the essay "Romance and High Adventure."
 * Lee has been known to spend most of her time between an apartment in New York and her sister's home in Monroeville. She has accepted honorary degrees but has declined to make speeches. In March 2005, she arrived in Philadelphia—her first trip to the city since signing with publisher Lippincott in 1960—to receive the inaugural ATTY Award for positive depictions of attorneys in the arts from the Spector Gadon & Rosen Foundation. At the urging of Peck's widow Veronique, Lee traveled by train from Monroeville to Los Angeles in 2005 to accept the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award. She has also attended luncheons for students who have written essays based on her work, held annually at the University of Alabama. On May 21, 2006, she accepted an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame. To honor her, the graduating seniors were given copies of //Mockingbird// before the ceremony and held them up when she received her degree.
 * On May 7, 2006, Lee wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey. Lee wrote about her love of books as a child and her dedication to the written word: "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." The letter was published in an edition of __O, the Oprah Magazine__.
 * Lee did not marry or have any children.



Harper Lee in the present.