Harper Lee: Education, Influences, and Literary Legacy
Nelle Harper Lee (1926-2016), known primarily as Harper Lee, was an American novelist celebrated for her profound impact on modern American literature. Her most renowned work, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic, exploring themes of prejudice, justice, and childhood innocence in the American South. This article delves into the formative years, education, and influences that shaped Lee's life and literary career.
Early Life and Influences
Born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, Nelle Harper Lee was the youngest of four children of Frances Cunningham (née Finch) and Amasa Coleman Lee. Her parents chose her middle name, Harper, to honor pediatrician Dr. William W. Harper, of Selma, who had saved the life of her sister Louise. Her first name, Nelle, was her grandmother's name spelled backwards and the name she used, whereas Harper Lee was primarily her pen name. Her father was a lawyer, a member of the Alabama state legislature from 1926 to 1938, and also owned part of the local newspaper. He provided the role model for Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, while her mother provided the main characters’ surname of Finch. Her mother suffered from mental illness for most of her life, rarely leaving the house, and it is believed that she may have had bipolar disorder. Through her father, she was related to Confederate General Robert E. Lee and a member of the prominent Lee family.
Growing up in the small town of Monroeville, Lee spent her childhood as a tomboy. She later recalled that she and her friends "had to use our own devices in our play, for our entertainment…We didn't have much money…We didn't have toys, nothing was done for us, so the result was that we lived in our imagination most of the time." One of Lee’s closest childhood friends was another writer-to-be, Truman Capote (then known as Truman Persons). Tougher than many of the boys, Lee often stepped up to serve as Truman's childhood protector. Truman, who shared few interests with boys his age, was picked on for being sensitive and for the fancy clothes he wore. While the two friends were very different, they both had difficult home lives. Truman was living with his mother's relatives in town after largely being abandoned by his own parents. This friendship would later influence both of their writing careers.
Education and Early Aspirations
Lee's interest in English literature developed during her time at Monroe County High School, in part through her teacher Gladys Watson, who became her mentor. After graduating in 1944, Lee attended the then all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery for a year. Lee stood apart from the other students-she couldn't have cared less about fashion, makeup or dating. Instead, she focused on her studies and writing. Lee was a member of the literary honor society and the glee club.
Transferring to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Lee was known for being a loner and an individualist. She did make a greater attempt at a social life there, joining a sorority for a while. Pursuing her interest in writing, Lee contributed to the school's newspaper and its humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer, eventually becoming the publication's editor. While at UA, Lee wrote columns, feature stories, and satires for the university newspaper and literary publications.
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In her junior year, Lee was accepted into the university's law school, which allowed students to work on law degrees while still undergraduates. The demands of her law studies forced her to leave her post as Rammer Jammer editor. Perhaps, he reasoned, she should have an experience that showed what a well-paying career like practicing law could provide, including the means to travel and write on the side. On April 29 1948, the Monroe Journal announced, "Miss Nelle Lee, University of Alabama law student and daughter of Mr and Mrs AC Lee of Monroeville, has been accepted as an exchange student at Oxford University in England during the coming summer. The summer school, European Civilisation in the Twentieth Century, was held at Lady Margaret Hall, St Hilda's College, and Worcester College, from 2 July-13 August. Harper Lee joined a student cohort of 296 participants. The six-week programme consisted of 13 general lectures which all students were expected to attend, plus 18 lectures in each of the four faculties - Literature, Politics, Economics and Philosophy. Lecturers were drawn from Oxford, Cambridge and many other universities, and there were 42 tutors on hand.
After her first year in the program, Lee began expressing to her family that writing-not the law-was her true calling. She went to the University of Oxford in England that summer as an exchange student. Harper Lee returned to Alabama after her Oxford summer, and dropped out of law school. She moved to New York City. Returning to her law studies that fall, Lee dropped out after the first semester. She soon moved north to follow her dreams to become a writer.
Early Writing Career and Friendship with Truman Capote
In 1949, a 23-year-old Lee arrived in New York City. She struggled for several years, working as a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines and for the British Overseas Air Corp (BOAC). While in the city, Lee befriended Broadway composer and lyricist Michael Martin Brown and his wife Joy. In 1956, the Browns gave Lee an impressive Christmas present-to support her for a year so that she could write full time. She quit her job and devoted herself to her craft. The Browns also helped her find an agent, Maurice Crain. He, in turn, was able to get publisher J.B. Lippincott Company interested in her work. Working with editor Tay Hohoff, Lee worked on a manuscript set in a small Alabama town, which eventually became her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
One of Lee’s closest childhood friends was another writer-to-be, Truman Capote (then known as Truman Persons). While in New York City in the 1950s, Lee was reunited with her old friend Capote, who was by then one of the literary rising stars of the time. In 1956, Lee joined forces with Capote to assist him with an article he was writing for The New Yorker. Capote was writing about the impact of the murder of four members of the Clutter family on their small Kansas farming community. The two traveled to Kansas to interview townspeople, friends and family of the deceased and the investigators working to solve the crime. Serving as his research assistant, Lee helped with the interviews, eventually winning over some of the locals with her easygoing, unpretentious manner. Truman, with his flamboyant personality and style, had a hard time initially getting himself into his subjects' good graces.
During their time in Kansas, the Clutters' suspected killers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, were caught in Las Vegas and brought back for questioning. Lee and Capote got a chance to interview the suspects not long after their arraignment in January 1960. Soon after, Lee and Capote returned to New York. She worked on the galleys for her forthcoming first novel while he started working on his article, which would evolve into the nonfiction masterpiece In Cold Blood. The pair returned to Kansas for the murder trial. Lee gave Capote all of her notes on the crime, the victims, the killers, the local communities and much more.
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Lee worked with Capote on and off on In Cold Blood. She had been invited by Smith and Hickock to witness their execution in 1965, but she declined. When Capote's book was finally published in 1966, a rift developed between the two collaborators for a time. Capote dedicated the book to Lee and his longtime lover, Jack Dunphy, but failed to acknowledge her contributions to the work. While Lee was very angry and hurt by this betrayal, she remained friends with Capote for the rest of his life.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Literary Acclaim
In July 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was published and picked up by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild. A condensed version of the story appeared in Reader's Digest magazine. The following year, the novel won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and several other literary awards. A classic of American literature, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages with more than a million copies sold each year.
The work's central character, a young girl nicknamed Scout, was not unlike Lee in her youth. In one of the book's major plotlines, Scout and her brother Jem and their friend Dill explore their fascination with a mysterious and somewhat infamous neighborhood character named Boo Radley.
The work was more than a coming-of-age story: another part of the novel reflected racial prejudices in the South. Their attorney father, Atticus Finch, tries to help a Black man who has been charged with raping a white woman to get a fair trial and to prevent him from being lynched by angry white people in a small town.
Lee helped with the adaptation of the book to the 1962 Academy Award-winning screenplay by Horton Foote, and said: "I think it is one of the best translations of a book to film ever made." Gregory Peck won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, the father of the novel's narrator, Scout.
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Later Years and Go Set a Watchman
In the mid-1960s, Lee was reportedly working on another novel, but it was never published. In 1966, Lee had an operation on her hand to repair the damage done by a bad burn. She also accepted a post on the National Council of the Arts at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson. During the 1970s and '80s, Lee largely retreated from public life.
Lee spent some of her time on a nonfiction book project about an Alabama serial killer which had the working title The Reverend. This work, however, was never published. Lee generally lived a quiet, private life, splitting her time between New York City and her hometown of Monroeville. In Monroeville, she lived with her older sister Alice Lee, a lawyer who the author called "Atticus in a skirt." Lee's sister was a close confidante who often took care of the author's legal and financial affairs.
Active in her church and community, Lee became famous for avoiding the spotlight of her celebrity. She would often use the wealth she had accumulated from her success to make anonymous philanthropic donations to various charitable causes. In November 2007, President George W. Bush presented Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her "outstanding contribution to America's literary tradition" at a ceremony at the White House.
Lee published her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, in July 2015. The story was essentially a first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird and followed the later lives of the novel’s characters. Go Set a Watchman was submitted to a publisher in 1957. When the book wasn't accepted, Lee's editor asked her to revise the story and make her main character Scout a child. The author worked on the story for two years and it eventually became To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lee's Go Set a Watchman was thought to be lost until it was discovered by her lawyer Tonja Carter in a safe deposit box. In February 2015, it was announced that HarperCollins would publish the manuscript on July 14, 2015.
Go Set a Watchman features Mockingbird's Scout as a 26-year-old woman on her way back home to Maycomb, Alabama, from New York City. Scout's father Atticus, the upstanding moral conscience of To Kill a Mockingbird, is portrayed as a racist with bigoted views and ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
The controversial novel and shocking portrayal of a beloved character sparked debates among fans, and offered literary scholars and students fodder for analyzing the author's creative process. Lee's second novel also broke pre-sale records for HarperCollins.
With reports of 88-year-old Lee's faltering health, questions arose about whether the publication was the author's decision. Lee issued a statement through Carter: "I’m alive and kicking and happy as hell with the reactions to Watchman."
But even that message didn't put an end to questions: In a 2011 letter, Lee's sister Alice had written that Lee would "sign anything put before her by any one in whom she has confidence." However, others who had met with Lee stated that she was behind the decision to publish. Alabama officials investigated and found no evidence that she was a victim of coercion.
Legal Battles and E-Publishing
In May 2013, Lee filed a lawsuit in federal court against literary agent Samuel Pinkus. Lee charged that, in 2007, Pinkus "engaged in a scheme to dupe" her out of the copyright to To Kill a Mockingbird, later diverting royalties from the work. In September 2013, a settlement was reached in the lawsuit. Later that year, Lee's legal team filed suit against the Monroe County Heritage Museum located in Monroeville for trying "to capitalize on the fame" of To Kill a Mockingbird and for selling unauthorized merchandise related to the novel. Lawyers for the author and the museum later filed a joint motion to end the suit, and the case was dismissed by a federal judge in February 2014.
That same year, Lee allowed her famous work to be released as an e-book. She signed a deal with HarperCollins for the company to release To Kill a Mockingbird as an e-book and digital audio editions. In a release shared by the publisher, Lee explained: "I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. I am amazed and humbled that Mockingbird has survived this long. This is Mockingbird for a new generation."
Death and Legacy
Lee died on February 19, 2016, at the age of 89. Her nephew, Hank Connor, said the author died in her sleep. In 2007, Lee suffered a stroke and struggled with various ongoing health issues, including hearing loss, limited vision and problems with her short-term memory. After the stroke, Lee moved into an assisted living facility in Monroeville.
Around the time of Lee’s death in 2016, it was announced that producer Scott Rudin had hired Aaron Sorkin to write a stage version of To Kill a Mockingbird. In March 2018, several months before the production's scheduled Broadway debut, Lee's estate filed a lawsuit on the grounds that Sorkin's adaptation significantly deviated from the original material.
A main point of contention was the play's portrayal of Finch, which reportedly showed him in early scenes as more in step with the oppressive racial feelings of the time, as opposed to the heroic crusader of the novel.
Rudin pushed back against the assertion that the characters were significantly altered, though he insisted he had leeway to adapt them to contemporary times. "I can’t and won’t present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics: It wouldn’t be of interest," he said.
Nelle Harper Lee's contribution to literature is significant. With To Kill a Mockingbird, she created an astute and touching portrait of life in a small southern town during the 1930s. The novel served as a call for social justice during the time. The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbors in Monroeville, Alabama, as well as a childhood event that occurred near her hometown in 1936. Her work continues to resonate with readers worldwide, prompting discussions about social justice, morality, and the complexities of human nature.
List of Works
- To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960
- Go Set a Watchman, 2015
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