Harper Lee
Harper Lee was an acclaimed American author best known for her novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," published in 1960, which earned her the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1961. The novel presents a poignant narrative set in a small Southern town during the 1930s, focusing on the themes of racial injustice and moral growth through the eyes of a young girl named Scout Finch. Lee's portrayal of her father, Atticus Finch, as a principled lawyer defending a black man unjustly accused of a crime resonated with readers, particularly during the Civil Rights movement in the United States.
Born in Monroeville, Alabama, Lee's early life and family background heavily influenced her writing. Although she published only one major novel for decades, her literary significance remained strong, culminating in the posthumous release of "Go Set a Watchman" in 2015, which was initially written before "To Kill a Mockingbird." This second novel sparked mixed reactions, particularly regarding the portrayal of Atticus Finch and its implications on the characters' moral complexities. Lee was largely reclusive throughout her life, giving few interviews and publishing only a handful of nonfiction pieces. She passed away on February 19, 2016, leaving behind a legacy that continues to provoke discussion on race, ethics, and human nature.
Subject Terms
Harper Lee
American Pulitzer Prize–winning author.
- Born: April 28, 1926
- Birthplace: Monroeville, Alabama
- Died: February 19, 2016
- Place of death: Monroeville, Alabama
Biography
Nelle Harper Lee’s contribution to literature is limited in terms of output. Yet with one novel—for many years her only work of fiction—Lee accomplished more than many prolific writers. That work, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), contains an astute and touching portrait of life in a small southern town during the 1930s. For this novel Lee received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1961. In 1962 the novel was made into an Academy Award-winning film, with a screenplay by Horton Foote. In the same year the novel received Best Sellers’ Paperback of the Year award.
Lee was born in a small Alabama town to Frances Finch and Amasa Coleman Lee. Her father, who had a law practice in Monroeville, provided the role model for Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, while her mother provided the main characters’ surname of Finch. Lee’s family is related to the southern Civil War general Robert E. Lee.
Lee’s formal education included the public schools of Monroeville and a year at Huntington College. In 1945 she attended the University of Alabama; then she spent a year abroad at the University of Oxford. After her return to the United States, Lee continued at the University of Alabama, though she left in 1950, only six months short of obtaining a law degree. Upon leaving Alabama, Lee went to New York City, where she worked as an airlines reservation clerk. Lee had started writing at the age of seven, but it was only during her stint in New York City that she finally wrote full-time in the hope of publication. The manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird was submitted to a publishing house in 1957, but it was only after two and a half years of rewriting that it was published.
One critic has called To Kill a Mockingbird a “level-headed plea for interracial understanding.” The novel’s core story deals with the plight of a black man who is wrongly accused of the rape of a white woman. He is innocent of the crime, but he is convicted by a racist jury and is sent to prison, where he is killed in an escape attempt. The story of this injustice is told through the voice of a ten-year-old girl, Scout, whose lawyer father combats the prevailing racial prejudice of the time to defend the innocent man.
A subplot of the novel deals with Boo Radley, a man who has been ostracized by the townspeople and by his own family. False rumors of his evil deeds and his reclusive ways have made the town’s children fear him. Scout and her brother, Jem, learn in the course of the novel that Boo is a hero, not a villain.
To Kill a Mockingbird is an initiation novel, one in which the child narrator learns important lessons about the good and bad sides of human nature and society. From her heroic father, she learns positive ethical principles, and from her relatives and the townspeople she learns about the harm done by bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and a suffocating social caste system. One reason for the novel’s enormous popular success was that it was published at a time when the nation was turning its attention to the Civil Rights movement and facing issues of integration and segregation head-on. The novel served as a call for social justice during the time.
For decades after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird Lee published nothing other than a few nonfiction articles in national magazines. She was, however, closely involved in helping her friend and fellow author Truman Capote research his groundbreaking work In Cold Blood (1966). Otherwise she remained mostly reclusive, giving few interviews. Lee reportedly started but abandoned several book projects, helping to fuel occasional rumors of a new release. Despite her lack of new material, Lee's importance as a writer was formally recognized through various awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2007. The same year she suffered a stroke, and was reportedly almost fully deaf and blind.
In February 2015, it was announced that, at the age of eighty-eight, Lee was finally preparing to release a second novel. Though hailed by some as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, the author's statement clarified that the new work, titled Go Set a Watchman, was written before her famous book but unreleased. In fact, it is an earlier version of Scout Finch's story, told from an adult perspective before Lee's editor suggested the changes that led to To Kill a Mockingbird. Although Lee had claimed for years that she would not publish another work, she allegedly changed her mind when a friend rediscovered the manuscript of Go Set a Watchman.
Go Set a Watchman was released in July 2015 to significant fanfare. The book broke records for preorders for her publisher, HarperCollins, and reached the top of many best seller lists. Though wildly successful and highly anticipated, the book was not without its detractors. Many of Lee's friends and members of the media questioned whether Lee, whose health was fragile at the time, had had the novel published of her own accord. Some critics found it to be an important and engrossing novel, but others did not think it was even a good read. In the novel, set twenty years after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird, an adult Scout returns home to tend to her sick father. Atticus Finch expresses conservative views that many viewed as racist and counter to the Atticus of To Kill a Mockingbird, causing outrage in the reading public.
Harper Lee died in her sleep on February 19, 2016, in Monroeville, Alabama. She was eighty-nine years old.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960
Go Set a Watchman, 2015
Nonfiction
"Dewey Had Important Part in Solving Brutal Murders," 1960
"Christmas to Me," 1961
"Love—In Other Words," 1961
"When Children Discover America," 1965
"Truman Capote," 1966
"Romance and High Adventure," 1985
"Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey," 2006
Bibliography
Betts, Doris. Introduction. Southern Women Writers: The New Generation. Ed. Tonette Bond Inge. Tuscaloosa: U Alabama P, 1990. Analysis of Lee is included in this volume of essays on the third generation of women authors from the American South.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Updated ed., Chelsea House, 2006. Edition of Lee's seminal novel including critical analysis, a study guide, and chronology of Lee's life.
Charles, Ron. "Harper Lee to Publish Sequel to 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'" Washington Post. Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2015. 4 May. 2015. Discusses announcement of Lee's first published work of fiction since her landmark first novel.
Grimes, William. "Harper Lee, Author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Dies at 89." New York Times. New York Times, 19 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Mar. 2016. Obituary covering Lee's life and career.
Johnson, Claudia Durst. To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries. New York: Twayne, 1994. Book-length critical study of Lee's first novel, including a chronology, notes, and selected bibliography.
Johnson, Claudia Durst. Understanding “To Kill a Mockingbird”: A Casebook to Issues, Sources and Historical Documents. Westport: Greenwood, 1994. Provides critical analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird, focusing on the context of the novel's setting and of its development.
Moates, Marianne M. A Bridge of Childhood: Truman Capote’s Southern Years. New York: Holt, 1989. Discusses Lee's relationship with Truman Capote.
Petry, Alice Hall, ed. On Harper Lee: Essays and Reflections. Knoxville: Tennessee U, 2007. A collection of secondary literature on Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Shields, Carol. Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. New York: Holt, 2006. This biography of Lee focuses on the circumstances of her development of To Kill a Mockingbird.