On February 19, 2016, Nelle
Harper Lee died in her home town of Monroeville Alabama. She was 89.
She wrote a single published novel in 1960, and it became an instant
best seller. It was followed by one of
the great American films starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham
as Scout. Robert Duvall, in his first
feature length role, following a string of TV appearances, played Boo
Radley. Lee won the Pulitzer Prize in
1961. Her novel is considered standard
reading for high school students all over the country. I read it for the first time as a sophomore
in high school. Recently, a second
novel, actually a first draft of Mockingbird,
which had been rejected by the publisher, found its way into print amid much
controversy.
Nelle – her grandmother’s
name spelled backwards – was born on April 28, 1926. She was the youngest of four children of Frances
Coleman Lee and Amasa Coleman Lee. Her
mother was a homemaker, and A.C. Lee, as he was known, was a newspaper editor
and proprietor, and practiced law. He
also served in the Alabama State Legislature from 1926 to 1938. All of her siblings preceded her in death.
She attended Monroe County
High School, where she developed a love of English literature. She then attended the all-female Huntingdon
College in Montgomery for a year. She
then transferred to the University of Alabama where she studied law while
writing for the university newspaper.
After a few years, she left college without a degree.
In 1949, she moved to New
York City, where she worked as an airline reservationist. She began writing a series of short
stories. In 1956, she found an agent. Shortly thereafter, she received a check from
some friends for a year’s wages with the following note, "You have one
year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."
In 1957 she delivered the
manuscript of Go Set a Watchman to
the prestigious Philadelphia publisher J.B. Lippincott. Her editor found the “spark of a true writer
in every line,” however, she felt the novel – a series of anecdotes -- was
unfit for publication. After several
re-writes, To Kill a Mockingbird was
born. As her fame grew, she began to
withdraw from the public eye and became a recluse. Her neighbors in Monroeville were secretive
about her habits and whereabouts. She
was awarded several honorary degrees, but she declined to talk at those
events. In 2007, Nelle was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In a 1964 interview, Lee
said, “I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at
the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would
like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got
rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the
quick, merciful death I'd expected.”
Thank you, Nelle, for many, many years of pleasurable reading. We will never forget you, Atticus, Scout,
Calpurnia, Dill, Boo, and Tom Robinson.
--Chiron, 2/21/16
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