Date of Birth: 28.04.1926
American writer, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Nell Harper Lee was born in Alabama, in the small town of Monroeville on April 28, 1926. In addition to Lee, the family of Amasa Colman Lee and France Cunningham Finch Lee had three children. Her father was in government service from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a daredevil and loved to read. Lee later reflected many details of her childhood and family life in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lee graduated from Monroeville High School and attended Huntingdon College for Women in Montgomery (1944-1945), and then studied law at the University of Alabama (1945-1949), where she joined the Chi Omega fraternity. During this time, she wrote several student publications and edited the humor magazine Remmer-Jammer for about a year. Lee did not graduate from the university, settled in New York and worked as an employee of the representative offices of Eastern Airlines and BOAC.
Lee continued to work as an airline employee until her late 50s, when she decided to devote herself to writing. She led a modest lifestyle, living in two houses: her apartment without hot water in New York and the family nest in Alabama, where she had a sick father.
After writing several short stories, Harper Lee found a literary agent in November 1956. The next month brought her a letter from friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, in which she received a gift in the form of a year's vacation with a note: “You have one year of vacation to write whatever you want. Merry Christmas". A year later, the draft of the novel was ready. Working with J.B. Lippincott, editor of Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. The novel was published on June 11, 1960 and became an immediate bestseller, receiving critical acclaim and the 1961 Pulitzer Prize. In 1999, the book was named "Best Novel of the Century" in a US Library Journal poll.
President Johnson elected Lee to the National Arts Council in June 1966, and since that time she has received numerous honorary positions. She continues to live in New York and Monroeville, where she leads a relatively secluded life, rarely giving interviews or speaking in public. She has published only a few short essays in popular literary publications since her literary debut. In October 2007, she was awarded the highest civilian honor in the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has given virtually no interviews, participated in public life, and, with the exception of a few short essays, has written nothing else.
Of Horton Foote's 1962 Oscar adaptation of her novel, Lee said, "If the merits of any adaptation can be measured by the degree to which it conveys the writer's intent, Mr. Foote's production should be studied as a classic example of such an adaptation." Harper Lee became a close friend of Gregory Peck, a movie star who played Jean's father, Atticus Finch.
Lee splits her time between her New York apartment and her sister's house in Monroeville. She accepts honorary positions but refuses public appearances. In March 2005 she arrived in Amrak, Philadelphia.
As a child, Lee was friends with her classmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote. He became the prototype for the boy Dill in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lee for the character in Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Lee was only five years old when the first trials were held in April 1931 in the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama, for the alleged rapes of two white women by nine young black men. Despite medical evidence that the women had not been raped, an all-white jury found the defendants guilty and sentenced all but the youngest, 13, to death. An appeals court subsequently overturned most of the charges. The case left a lasting impression on Lee, and many years later she used it as the basis for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lee attends annual luncheons for students who wrote essays based on her work at the University of Alabama.
) - American writer, author of the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" (eng. To Kill a Mockingbird, ).
Biography
Beginning of life
Lee was only five years old when the first trials were held in April 1931 in the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama, for the alleged rapes of two white women by nine young black men. The defendants, who were nearly lynched even before the trial took place, were provided with the services of a defense lawyer only from the moment the case began in court. Despite the medical report that the women had not been raped, the all-white jury convicted and sentenced to death all but the youngest, thirteen, of the accused. Over the next six years, on appeal, most of these charges were overturned and all but one of the defendants were released. The Scottsboro case left a lasting impression on the young Harper Lee, who many years later used it as the basis for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee entered Huntingdon College for Women in Montgomery (-), studied law at the University of Alabama (-), and joined the Chi Omega fraternity. Chi Omega). During this time she published several student stories and was editor of a humor magazine for about a year Remmer-Jammer. She spent a year at Oxford University as an exchange student, planning to work in her father's law firm in the future. Six months before the end of the course, she left her studies and moved to New York, dreaming of becoming a professional writer. Until the end of the 1950s. made a living working as an airline ticket sales clerk Eastern Air Lines and BOAC. She led a modest lifestyle, living in a small apartment in New York and sometimes returning to her parents' house.
"To Kill a Mockingbird"
“I never expected Mockingbird to be any successful. I hoped for a quick and merciful death at the hands of critics, but at the same time I thought maybe someone would like it enough to give me the courage to continue writing. I hoped for little, but I got everything, and it was, to some extent, as frightening as a quick, merciful death.”
Harper Lee
There is an opinion that the success of the novel is due to the fact that its publication coincided with the beginning of the civil rights movement in the United States.
In one of her rare interviews (1961), Lee said that the plot of the novel was a complete fiction and had nothing to do with the story of her own “boring” childhood.
After To Kill a Mockingbird
After writing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee traveled with Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to assist him in researching the small town's response to the murder of a farmer and his family there. The result of the work should have been an article. Capote based his best-selling novel “In Cold Blood” () on this material. Based on the events that happened in this town with Capote and Lee, two different films were created, “Capote” (), “Notorious” ().
Since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has given virtually no interviews, participated in public life, and, with the exception of a few short essays, has written nothing else. She was working on her second novel, which was released only in July 2015 - less than a year before Lee's death. In the mid-1980s, she began work on a non-fiction book about the Alabama serial killer, but abandoned it because she was not satisfied with the results.
Of the screenplay written by Horton Foote based on her book (the film won an Oscar in 1962), Lee said: " If the merit of any film adaptation can be measured by the degree to which the writer's intent is conveyed, then Mr. Foote's adaptation should be studied as a classic example of such an adaptation." Harper Lee became a close friend of Gregory Peck, a movie star who played Jean's father, Atticus Finch. This role brought Gregory Peck an Oscar in 1963. She remained a close friend of the actor's family. Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Wall, was named after the writer.
Lee split her time between her apartment in New York and her sister's house in Monroeville. She accepted honorary positions but refused public appearances. In March 2005, she came to Amrak for the first time since her appearance there with publisher Lippincott in 1960, when she received the ATTY award from the Spector Gadon-Rosen Foundation for the portrayal of lawyers in fiction.
Harper Lee died in her sleep on the morning of February 19, 2016, at the age of 90. She lived in Monroeville, Alabama until her death. Harper Lee never married and had no children.
Awards and honors
- : President Johnson appointed Lee to the National Council of the Arts, from which time she received numerous honorary positions
- : Recipient of the United States' highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In art
Catherine Keener played Lee in the film Capote (2005), Sandra Bullock in the film Notorious (2006), Tracy Hoyt in the television film Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story (1998). In the film adaptation of the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995), the character Idabel Tompkins (Aubrey Dollar) is inspired by Truman Capote's memories of Harper Lee's childhood.
The rest of the infantry hurried across the bridge, forming a funnel at the entrance. Finally, all the carts passed, the crush became less, and the last battalion entered the bridge. Only the hussars of Denisov's squadron remained on the other side of the bridge against the enemy. The enemy, visible in the distance from the opposite mountain, from below, from the bridge, was not yet visible, since from the hollow along which the river flowed, the horizon ended at the opposite elevation no more than half a mile away. Ahead there was a desert, along which here and there groups of our traveling Cossacks were moving. Suddenly, on the opposite hill of the road, troops in blue hoods and artillery appeared. These were the French. The Cossack patrol trotted away downhill. All the officers and men of Denisov’s squadron, although they tried to talk about outsiders and look around, did not stop thinking only about what was there on the mountain, and constantly peered at the spots on the horizon, which they recognized as enemy troops. The weather cleared again in the afternoon, the sun set brightly over the Danube and the dark mountains surrounding it. It was quiet, and from that mountain the sounds of horns and screams of the enemy could occasionally be heard. There was no one between the squadron and the enemies, except for small patrols. An empty space, three hundred fathoms, separated them from him. The enemy stopped shooting, and the more clearly one felt that strict, menacing, impregnable and elusive line that separates the two enemy troops.
“One step beyond this line, reminiscent of the line separating the living from the dead, and - the unknown of suffering and death. And what's there? who's there? there, beyond this field, and the tree, and the roof illuminated by the sun? Nobody knows, and I want to know; and it’s scary to cross this line, and you want to cross it; and you know that sooner or later you will have to cross it and find out what is there on the other side of the line, just as it is inevitable to find out what is there on the other side of death. And he himself is strong, healthy, cheerful and irritated, and surrounded by such healthy and irritably animated people.” So, even if he doesn’t think, every person who is in sight of the enemy feels it, and this feeling gives a special shine and joyful sharpness of impressions to everything that happens in these minutes.
The smoke of a shot appeared on the enemy’s hill, and the cannonball, whistling, flew over the heads of the hussar squadron. The officers standing together went to their places. The hussars carefully began to straighten out their horses. Everything in the squadron fell silent. Everyone looked ahead at the enemy and at the squadron commander, waiting for a command. Another, third cannonball flew by. It is obvious that they were shooting at the hussars; but the cannonball, whistling evenly quickly, flew over the heads of the hussars and struck somewhere behind. The hussars did not look back, but at every sound of a flying cannonball, as if on command, the entire squadron with its monotonously varied faces, holding back its breath while the cannonball flew, rose in its stirrups and fell again. The soldiers, without turning their heads, glanced sideways at each other, curiously looking for the impression of their comrade. On every face, from Denisov to the bugler, one common feature of struggle, irritation and excitement appeared near the lips and chin. The sergeant frowned, looking around at the soldiers, as if threatening punishment. Junker Mironov bent down with each pass of the cannonball. Rostov, standing on the left flank on his leg-touched but visible Grachik, had the happy look of a student summoned before a large audience for an exam in which he was confident that he would excel. He looked clearly and brightly at everyone, as if asking them to pay attention to how calmly he stood under the cannonballs. But in his face, too, the same feature of something new and stern, against his will, appeared near his mouth.
-Who is bowing there? Yunkeg "Mig"ons! Hexog, look at me! - Denisov shouted, unable to stand still and spinning on his horse in front of the squadron.
The snub-nosed and black-haired face of Vaska Denisov and his entire small, beaten figure with his sinewy (with short fingers covered with hair) hand, in which he held the hilt of a drawn saber, was exactly the same as always, especially in the evening, after drinking two bottles. He was only more red than usual and, raising his shaggy head up, like birds when they drink, mercilessly pressing spurs into the sides of the good Bedouin with his small feet, he, as if falling backwards, galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to be examined pistols. He drove up to Kirsten. The headquarters captain, on a wide and sedate mare, rode at a pace towards Denisov. The staff captain, with his long mustache, was serious, as always, only his eyes sparkled more than usual.
- What? - he told Denisov, - it won’t come to a fight. You'll see, we'll go back.
“Who knows what they’re doing,” Denisov grumbled. “Ah! G” skeleton! - he shouted to the cadet, noticing his cheerful face. - Well, I waited.
And he smiled approvingly, apparently rejoicing at the cadet.
Rostov felt completely happy. At this time the chief appeared on the bridge. Denisov galloped towards him.
- Your Excellency! Let me attack! I will kill them.
“What kind of attacks are there,” said the chief in a bored voice, wincing as if from a bothersome fly. - And why are you standing here? You see, the flankers are retreating. Lead the squadron back.
The squadron crossed the bridge and escaped the gunfire without losing a single man. Following him, the second squadron, which was in the chain, crossed over, and the last Cossacks cleared that side.
Two squadrons of Pavlograd residents, having crossed the bridge, one after the other, went back to the mountain. Regimental commander Karl Bogdanovich Schubert drove up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a pace not far from Rostov, not paying any attention to him, despite the fact that after the previous clash over Telyanin, they now saw each other for the first time. Rostov, feeling himself at the front in the power of a man before whom he now considered himself guilty, did not take his eyes off the athletic back, blond nape and red neck of the regimental commander. It seemed to Rostov that Bogdanich was only pretending to be inattentive, and that his whole goal now was to test the cadet’s courage, and he straightened up and looked around cheerfully; then it seemed to him that Bogdanich was deliberately riding close to show Rostov his courage. Then he thought that his enemy would now deliberately send a squadron on a desperate attack to punish him, Rostov. It was thought that after the attack he would come up to him and generously extend the hand of reconciliation to him, the wounded man.
Familiar to the people of Pavlograd, with his shoulders raised high, the figure of Zherkov (he had recently left their regiment) approached the regimental commander. Zherkov, after his expulsion from the main headquarters, did not remain in the regiment, saying that he was not a fool to pull the strap at the front, when he was at headquarters, without doing anything, he would receive more awards, and he knew how to find a job as an orderly with Prince Bagration. He came to his former boss with orders from the commander of the rearguard.
“Colonel,” he said with his gloomy seriousness, turning to Rostov’s enemy and looking around at his comrades, “it was ordered to stop and light the bridge.”
- Who ordered? – the colonel asked gloomily.
“I don’t even know, colonel, who ordered it,” the cornet answered seriously, “but the prince ordered me: “Go and tell the colonel so that the hussars come back quickly and light the bridge.”
Following Zherkov, a retinue officer drove up to the hussar colonel with the same order. Following the retinue officer, fat Nesvitsky rode up on a Cossack horse, which was forcibly carrying him at a gallop.
“Well, Colonel,” he shouted while still driving, “I told you to light the bridge, but now someone has misinterpreted it; Everyone there is going crazy, you can’t understand anything.
The colonel slowly stopped the regiment and turned to Nesvitsky:
“You told me about flammable substances,” he said, “but you didn’t tell me anything about lighting things.”
“Why, father,” Nesvitsky said, stopping, taking off his cap and straightening his sweat-wet hair with his plump hand, “how come you didn’t say to light the bridge when the flammable substances were put in?”
“I’m not your “father,” Mr. Staff Officer, and you didn’t tell me to light the bridge! I know the service, and it’s my habit to strictly carry out orders. You said the bridge will be lit, but who will light it, I cannot know with the Holy Spirit...
“Well, it’s always like this,” Nesvitsky said, waving his hand. - How are you here? – he turned to Zherkov.
- Yes, for the same thing. However, you are damp, let me squeeze you out.
“You said, Mr. Staff Officer,” the colonel continued in an offended tone...
“Colonel,” interrupted the retinue officer, “we must hurry, otherwise the enemy will move the guns to the grape shot.”
The colonel silently looked at the retinue officer, at the fat staff officer, at Zherkov and frowned.
“I’ll light the bridge,” he said in a solemn tone, as if expressing that, despite all the troubles being caused to him, he would still do what he had to do.
Hitting the horse with his long muscular legs, as if it were all to blame, the colonel moved forward to the 2nd squadron, the same one in which Rostov served under the command of Denisov, and ordered to return back to the bridge.
“Well, that’s right,” thought Rostov, “he wants to test me!” “His heart sank and the blood rushed to his face. “Let him see if I’m a coward,” he thought.
Again, on all the cheerful faces of the squadron people, that serious feature appeared that was on them while they were standing under the cannonballs. Rostov, without taking his eyes off, looked at his enemy, the regimental commander, wanting to find confirmation of his guesses on his face; but the colonel never looked at Rostov, but looked, as always at the front, strictly and solemnly. A command was heard.
- Alive! Alive! – several voices spoke around him.
Clinging to the reins with their sabers, rattling their spurs and hurrying, the hussars dismounted, not knowing what they would do. The hussars were baptized. Rostov no longer looked at the regimental commander - he had no time. He was afraid, with a sinking heart he was afraid that he might fall behind the hussars. His hand trembled as he handed the horse to the handler, and he felt the blood rushing to his heart. Denisov, falling back and shouting something, drove past him. Rostov saw nothing except the hussars running around him, clinging to their spurs and clanking their sabers.
- Stretcher! – someone’s voice shouted from behind.
Rostov did not think about what the demand for a stretcher meant: he ran, trying only to be ahead of everyone; but at the bridge itself, without looking at his feet, he fell into viscous, trampled mud and, stumbling, fell on his hands. Others ran around him.
“On both sides, captain,” he heard the voice of the regimental commander, who, riding forward, stood on horseback not far from the bridge with a triumphant and cheerful face.
Rostov, wiping his dirty hands on his leggings, looked back at his enemy and wanted to run further, believing that the further he went forward, the better it would be. But Bogdanich, although he did not look and did not recognize Rostov, shouted at him:
- Who is running along the middle of the bridge? On the right side! Juncker, go back! - he shouted angrily and turned to Denisov, who, flaunting his courage, rode on horseback onto the planks of the bridge.
- Why take risks, captain! “You should get down,” said the colonel.
- Eh! he will find the culprit,” answered Vaska Denisov, turning in the saddle.
Meanwhile, Nesvitsky, Zherkov and the retinue officer stood together outside the shots and looked either at this small group of people in yellow shakos, dark green jackets embroidered with strings, and blue leggings, swarming near the bridge, then at the other side, at the blue hoods and groups approaching in the distance with horses, which could easily be recognized as tools.
USA
South American Gothic
"To Kill a Mockingbird"
Biography
Beginning of life
Nell, known as Martizia or Harper Lee, was born in the USA, southwestern Alabama, in the small town of Monroeville on April 28, 1926. She is the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and France Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a former newspaper owner and editor, was a lawyer and also served in government service from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and began to read at an early age. She was friends with her classmate and neighbor, young Truman Capote.
Lee was only five years old when the first trials took place in April 1931 in the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama, into the alleged rapes of two white women by nine young black men. The defendants, who were almost lynched even before the trial took place, were provided with the services of a defense lawyer only from the moment the case began in court. Despite medical evidence that the women were not raped, an all-white jury convicted and sentenced to death all but the youngest, 13 years old. Over the next six years, on appeal, most of these charges were dropped and all but one of the defendants were released. The Scottborr case left a lasting impression on the young Harper Lee, who many years later used it as the basis for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee attended Huntingdon College for Women in Montgomery (1944-45), studied law at the University of Alabama (1945-49), and joined the Chi Omega fraternity. During this time she wrote several student publications and was editor of the humor magazine, Remmer-Jammer, for about a year. Although she never graduated from university or received a law degree, she spent a summer at Oxford in England, then settled in New York and worked as a desk clerk for Eastern Airlines and BOAC.
Lee continued to work as an airline employee until her late 50s, when she decided to devote herself to writing. She led a modest lifestyle, often moving between her apartment without hot water in New York and the family nest in Alabama, where she had an ailing father.
"To Kill a Mockingbird"
After writing several short stories, Harper Lee found a literary agent in November 1956. The following month brought her a letter from friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, in which she received the gift of a year's vacation with a note: “You have one year of vacation to write whatever you want. Merry Christmas". A year later, the draft of the novel was ready. Working with J.B. Lippincott, editor of Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. The novel was published on June 11, 1960, and became a bestseller, receiving critical acclaim, including the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The book remains on the US bestseller list to this day, with over 30 million copies in print, and has earned its place on the list of outstanding works of American literature. In 1999, it was chosen as the "Best Novel of the Century" in a US Library Magazine poll.
“I never expected Mockingbird to be any successful. I hoped for a quick and merciful death at the hands of critics, but at the same time I thought maybe someone would like it enough to give me the courage to continue writing. I hoped for little, but I got everything, and it was, to some extent, as frightening as a quick, merciful death.”
To Kill a Mockingbird, novel plot
The novel is to some extent autobiographical. Like Lee, tomboyish Jean Louise is the daughter of a lawyer in a small Alabama town. The plot of the story involves a court case, which was a familiar area for Lee, who had studied law. Jean Dill's friend is Harper Lee's supposed childhood friend Truman Capote. By the way, Lee herself became the prototype for the character in Capote’s first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Although Lee tried to play down the autobiographical parallels, her biographer Charles Shields uses them as evidence against the popular theory that Capote wrote part of To Kill a Mockingbird, a suggestion Capote at one time passed over without comment, but later denied any involvement in writing the novel. Using the example of one of the characters in the story, Arthur Redley, Capote described the difference between his literary style and the style of Harper Lee: “In my original version of “Other Voices, Other Rooms” there is a man who lives as a hermit in a house and leaves things in a hollow tree that I take from there. . This is a real person and he lived just across the street from us. We often found these things in the trees and took them from there. Everything Lee wrote about this is absolutely true. But, you see, I take the same things and turn them into a Gothic dream, and I do it in a completely different manner." (William Nance, The Worlds of Truman Capote. New York: Stein & Day, 1970, p. 223.)
Based on the fact that Lee had failed to write anything new since her first novel, at least nothing worth criticizing, Harper's publisher, Pearl Kazin Bell, supported the theory of Lee's co-authorship with Truman Capote. The most compelling evidence against this theory is the existence of Capote's letter to his aunt dated July 9, 1959. In this letter he says that he saw the manuscript of the novel and that he was in no way involved in the writing.
After To Kill a Mockingbird
After writing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee went with Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to help him with his psychological literary study of the reaction of a small town to the murder of a farmer and his family. The result of the work should have been an article. Capote based his best-selling novel “In Cold Blood” (1966) on this material. Based on the events that happened in this town with Capote and Lee, two different films were created, “Capote” (2005), “Infamous” (2006).
Since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has given virtually no interviews, participated in public life, and, with the exception of a few short essays, has written nothing else. She was working on her second novel, but it still hasn't seen the light of day. Sometime in the mid-eighties, she began work on a non-fiction book about the Alabama serial killer, but she stopped working on it because she was not happy with its results.
Of Horton Foote's adaptation of her novel (which won an Academy Award in 1962), Lee said, "If the merits of any adaptation can be measured by the degree to which it conveys the writer's intent, then Mr. Foote's production should be studied as a classic example of such an adaptation." Harper Lee became a close friend of Gregory Pack, a movie star who played Jean's father, Atticus Finch. This role brought Gregory Pack an Oscar. She remains a close friend of the actor's family. Pack's grandson, Harper Pack Wall, was named after the writer.
In June 1966, Lee was one of two people appointed by President Lyndon Jones to the National Council of the Arts. The writer attended the Alabama History and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Abalama, with her essay “Novel and Adventure” in 1983.
Lee splits her time between her New York apartment and her sister's house in Monroeville. She accepts honorary positions but refuses public appearances. In March 2005, she came to Amrak, Philadelphia - her first visit to that city since appearing there with publisher Lippincott in 1960 - to receive the inaugural ATTY Award for the portrayal of lawyers in fiction from the Spector Gadon-Rosen Foundation. Prompted by Gregory Pack's widow, Veronique Lee traveled by train from Monroeville to Los Angeles in 2005 to receive an award for achievement in literature from the Los Angeles Public Library. She also attends the annual luncheon for students who wrote essays based on her work at the University of Alabama. On May 21, 2006, she received an honorary degree from the University of Notterdam. To honor her, university graduates held “To Kill a Mockingbird” in their hands during the celebration.
Her retreat from public life gives rise to constant but unfounded speculation about the continuation of her literary activity. The same speculations haunted the American writers Jerome David Selinger and Ralph Alison.
In Oprah Winfrey's O magazine (May 2006), Lee wrote about her early love of books and her dedication to literature: "Now, 75 years later, in an affluent society in which people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and empty heads, I still prefer books.”
While attending the August 20, 2007 induction ceremony for four new members of the Alabama Honor Academy, Lee declined to speak, saying, "...it's better to be silent than stupid."
Artistic portraits of Harper Lee
Catherine Keener played Lee in the film Capote (2005), Sandra Bullock in the film Disgraced (2006), Tracy Hoyt in the television film Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story (1998). In the film adaptation of Truman Capote's novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995), the character Idabel Thompkins (Aubrey Dollar) is inspired by Truman Capote's memories of Harper Lee's childhood.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
It is difficult to be an actor of one role, it is even more difficult to be a writer of one book. This is exactly what, unfortunately, happened to the author of the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” Harper Lee.
After the bestseller, published in 1960 and receiving an incredible number of awards, Lee did not write anything significant: a few essays, articles, stories. But such was her destiny as a writer - to reap the fruits of one brilliantly written novel throughout her long life.
Early years
Writer Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in the USA, in the tiny town of Monroeville in Alabama in the family of a lawyer and a housewife. In total, the parents raised four children, among whom Harper was the youngest.
Harper Lee had a cocky, boyish character and caused a lot of trouble for her family, but she loved to read from early childhood. Her best friend was her classmate and neighbor Truman Capote, who later became a famous writer.
Harper Lee and Truman Capote were lifelong friends. Much later, some of their mutual acquaintances suggested a romantic relationship between the writers, but they both claimed that they had always been only friends.
Enraged residents of the town were ready to tear the suspects to pieces on the spot, without trial or investigation. Fortunately, this was avoided. The doctor's statement that the women were not raped did not reassure people. The jury, which, by the way, consisted only of whites, decided to apply the death penalty to all participants in the crime. Later, by filing appeals, all the guys were released, except one.
Most likely, despite her young age, the future writer remembered this matter because her father was interested in it as a professional. And he often took work home. Critics believe that Harper's novel is based on the events of that long-ago tragic case.
After graduating from school, the future writer becomes a student at the Women's College in the town of Huntington in West Virginia. After college, Harper applied to law school at the University of Alabama. The profession of lawyer was chosen for her by her father, who by that time had already become a major statesman.
Harper studied one course at Oxford as an exchange student. But she did not graduate from the University of Alabama. Lee decided to move to New York to become a professional writer.
Creation
In the metropolis, the future writer did not immediately manage to do what she loved, because she had no means of subsistence. Therefore, for almost ten years, the young woman had to work as an airline ticket salesman to earn a modest living. She rented a small apartment and often visited her parents in her hometown.
The writer's biography mentions that in the late 50s, Harper received a very important gift for Christmas that changed her life. Old friends gave her a year's paid vacation with the wish to write whatever she wanted during this time. As a result, an immortal work was published - the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960.
The work won the love of readers around the world, received favorable reviews from literary critics, and Harper Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Best Fiction of the Year.
Harper developed a particularly close relationship with the lead actor, Gregory Peck. For his talented performance of the role, the writer gave him his father's watch. There were rumors that Harper and Gregory were having an affair, but the writer denied such speculation, claiming that they were just good friends.
Life after fame
Having written her brilliant work and basked in the rays of fame, the writer continued to actively work in the literary field. Around the same time, a brutal murder of a farming family took place in Kansas. Her friend T. Capote became interested in this case and invited Harper to help him collect material on this case.
After writing and publishing her masterpiece, Harper wrote very little—only short essays and short stories. She gratefully accepted various awards, but gave interviews very reluctantly and led a reclusive life.
It is known that Lee took on the task of writing another major work - about an Alabama serial killer. But during the work, the writer considered the plot unsuccessful and threw away the draft.
In 2007, Harper Lee received from President George W. Bush. the country's highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom. A few months after this event, the writer suffered a stroke, as a result of which she had to move to a nursing home, where she received appropriate care.
Among the things of the deceased sister, an unknown novel “Go Set a Watchman” was found. The title quotes the book of the prophet Isaiah from the Old Testament. Formally, this novel is a continuation of the bestseller To Kill a Mockingbird, but in fact the writer wrote it before her masterpiece. Critics were quick to declare the novel a hoax and argued that Harper was not the author. Lee herself did not comment on these assumptions, but the novel was published in 2015 and immediately became a bestseller.
The list of Harper Lee's works is small:
- To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).
- "Romance and Adventure" (1983).
- “Go Set a Watchman” (2015).
Nell Harper Lee passed away on February 19, 2016, at the age of 90. Death came to the famous writer in a dream. She died the way many people dream of. This is a short biography of a legendary personality who entered the history of world literature thanks to his one and only work. Author: Victoria Ivanova
Harper Lee has died
Famous American writer Harper Lee, author of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has died at the age of 89.
On February 19, at the age of 89, the famous American writer Nelle Harper Lee, author of the best-selling book To Kill a Mockingbird, for which she received a Pulitzer Prize, died.
A number of American websites report the death of the writer, citing a number of sources from the writer’s hometown.
To Kill a Mockingbird - Trailer
Nell Harper Lee born April 28, 1926 in the small town of Monroeville in southwestern Alabama.
She was the youngest child of Amas Colman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee (there were four children in total).
Her father, a former newspaper owner and editor, was a lawyer and was in government service from 1926 to 1938.
As a child, Lee was a tomboy and began reading at an early age. Was friends with a classmate and young neighbor Truman Capote.
Lee was only five years old when the first trials were held in April 1931 in the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama, for the alleged rapes of two white women by nine young black men. The defendants, who were nearly lynched even before the trial took place, were provided with the services of a defense lawyer only from the moment the case began in court.
Despite the medical report that the women had not been raped, the all-white jury convicted and sentenced to death all but the youngest, thirteen, of the accused.
Over the next six years, on appeal, most of these charges were overturned and all but one of the defendants were released. Scottsboro case left a lasting impression on the young Harper Lee, who many years later used it as the basis for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
After graduating from school in Monroeville, Lee entered Huntingdon College for Women in Montgomery (1944-1945), studied law at the University of Alabama (1945-1949), and joined a women's fraternity "Chi-Omega"(Chi Omega).
During this time, she published several student stories and was editor of the humor magazine Remmer-Jammer for about a year. She never graduated from university or received a law degree, but spent a summer at Oxford in England, then settled in New York and worked as a representative office for Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.
Lee continued to work as an airline employee until the late 1950s, when she decided to devote herself to writing. She led a modest lifestyle, living in two houses - she had her own apartment without hot water in New York, and at times she spent time at her parents' house in Alabama, where she had an ill father.
"To Kill a Mockingbird"
After writing several short stories, Harper Lee found a literary agent in November 1956. In December, she received a letter from friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, which included a gift in the form of an paid year's vacation.
Friends wrote: “You have one year off to write whatever you want. Merry Christmas". A year later, the draft of the novel was ready.
Working with J.B. Lippincott, editor of Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. The novel was published on July 11, 1960, and became a bestseller and received critical acclaim, including the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The novel is to some extent autobiographical. Like Lee, tomboyish Jean Louise is the daughter of a lawyer in a small Alabama town. The plot of the story involves a court case, which was a familiar area for Lee, who had studied law. Jean's friend, Dill, is supposedly Harper Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote.
The book remains on the US bestseller list to this day, with over 30 million copies in print. It has earned its place in the list of outstanding works of American literature.
In 1999, the book was named "Best Novel of the Century" in a US Library Journal poll.
“I never expected Mockingbird to be any successful. I hoped for a quick and merciful death at the hands of critics, but at the same time I thought maybe someone would like it enough to give me the courage to continue writing. I hoped for little, but I got everything, and it was, to some extent, as frightening as a quick, merciful death.”, said Harper Lee.
President Johnson elected Lee to the National Arts Council in June 1966, and since that time she has received numerous honorary positions. She continues to live in New York and Monroeville, where she leads a relatively secluded life, rarely giving interviews or speaking in public. She has published only a few short essays in popular literary publications since her literary debut.
After writing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee traveled with Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to help him research the small town's response to the murder of a farmer and his family. The result of the work should have been an article. Capote based his best-selling novel “In Cold Blood” (1966) on this material. Based on the events that happened in this town with Capote and Lee, two different films were created, "Capote" (2005), "Bad reputation" (2006).
Since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has given virtually no interviews, participated in public life, and, with the exception of a few short essays, has written nothing else. She was working on her second novel, but it still hasn't seen the light of day. In the mid-1980s, she began work on a non-fiction book about the Alabama serial killer, but abandoned it because she was not satisfied with the results.
Regarding Horton Foote's film adaptation of her novel (the film won an Academy Award in 1962), Lee said: “If the merit of any film adaptation can be measured by the degree to which the writer's intent is conveyed, then Mr. Foote's production should be studied as a classic example of such an adaptation.”.
Harper Lee became a close friend of Gregory Peck, a movie star who played Jean's father, Atticus Finch. This role brought Gregory Peck an Oscar. She remains a close friend of the actor's family. Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Wall, was named after the writer.
In June 1966, Lee became one of two people appointed by the President to the National Council of the Arts. Writer with her essay "Romance and Adventure" in 1983 attended the Alabama History and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama.
Lee split her time between her apartment in New York and her sister's house in Monroeville. She accepted honorary positions but refused public appearances.
In March 2005, she came to Amrak for the first time since her appearance there with publisher Lippincott in 1960, when she received the ATTY award from the Spector Gadon-Rosen Foundation for the portrayal of lawyers in fiction.
In 2005, Lee, at the initiative of Gregory Peck's widow Veronique, traveled by train from Monroeville to Los Angeles to receive an award for achievements in literature from the Los Angeles Public Library. She also attends the annual awards luncheon for students who wrote essays based on her work at the University of Alabama.
On May 21, 2006, she received an honorary degree from the University of Notterdam. As a sign of respect, university graduates held To Kill a Mockingbird in their hands during the ceremony.
Her retreat from public life gives rise to constant but unfounded speculation about the continuation of her literary activity. The same speculations haunted the American writers Jerome David Selinger and Ralph Ellison.
In O magazine (May 2006), Lee wrote about her early love of books and her relationship with literature: “Now, 75 years later, in a wealthy society in which people have laptops, mobile phones, iPods and empty heads, I still prefer books.”.
On August 20, 2007, at the induction ceremony for four new members of the Alabama Honor Academy, Lee refused to speak, saying: “It’s better to be silent than stupid”.
In November 2007, Lee suffered a stroke, after which she was forced to live in a nursing home. Her older sister Alice, who managed her affairs throughout Lee’s life, died in 2014 at the age of 104, after which Lee had virtually no contact with the outside world.
Lee Harper's book was published in 2015 "Go, set a watchman"(quote from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah 21:6), which was written earlier than the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, but was not published at the time. However, critics believe that this is the first draft (draft) of the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” and was published by Harper Books and Tonya Carter, the current legal adviser to the elderly writer who controls the estate of Lee Harper, for personal commercial purposes.
Bibliography of Harper Lee:
Novels:
1960 - To Kill a Mockingbird
2015 - Should you go? Go Set a Watchman
Articles and essays:
1961 - Love - In Other Words
1961 - Christmas to Me
1965 - When Children Discover America
1983 - Romance and High Adventure
2006 - Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey
