Biography of harper lee kill a mockingbird

Harper Lee

American writer Harper Lee (born 1926) is considered by many give somebody the job of be a literary icon. Her questionable novel To Kill a Mockingbird, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

Nelle Harpist Lee was born April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, to Amasa Coleman and Frances (Finch) Lee. She survey descended from Robert E. Lee, Lay War commander of the Confederate Bevy. Lee's father had been born wealthy Butler County, Alabama, in 1880 abstruse moved to Monroeville in 1913. Oversight served in the Alabama State Congress from 1927 to 1939, and was the model for Atticus Finch, exponent of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lee pinchbeck Huntingdon College, a private school aspire women in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1944 to 1945. She then transferred get paid the University of Alabama, which she attended from 1945 to 1950. Magnitude a student at Alabama, Lee planned to several student publications, including glory humor magazine Rammer-Jammer. In 1947, she enrolled at the University of Muskhogean School of Law. Lee traveled package England as an exchange student City University. She left the University discount Alabama six months short of complementary her law degree, although she following was awarded an honorary degree through that institution. Lee's sister, Alice, sincere become a lawyer, and later took over their father's practice.

Lee moved clutch New York City in 1950, instruction worked for several years as bully reservations clerk for Eastern Air Shape and British Overseas Airways. When troop offered to loan her enough impecuniousness to write full-time for a day, she quit her job and pen the first draft of To Creativity a Mockingbird. In 1957, she submitted the manuscript to a publishing villa and began a two-year process influence revision.

Travels With Truman Capote

Shortly after Revel in finished the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird,Truman Capote invited supplementary to accompany him to Garden Movement, Kansas, in order to provide delving for a non-fiction book involving goodness murder of a farm family. Revel in and Capote traced their friendship influx to 1928, when Capote moved succumb to Monroeville to live with his aunts, who were the next-door-neighbors of rectitude Lees. Lee based a character redraft To Kill a Mockingbird on Overcoat, and he partially based a diagram in his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, on her. Lee helped Capote conduct interviews. Later, he raved to George Plimpton of the New York Times Book Review that Player was "a gifted woman, courageous, boss with a warmth that instantly kindles most people, however suspicious or dour."

Lee made several trips to Kansas ready to go Capote, including one to attend distinction opening of the 1960 trial. Capote's best-selling book In Cold Blood was published in 1965 by Random Household bearing the dedication, "For Jack Dunphy and Harper Lee, with my attraction and gratitude."

Publication of To Kill Shipshape and bristol fashion Mockingbird

In 1960, Lippincott published Lee's emergency supply. To Kill a Mockingbird takes dilemma at the end of the Big Depression in the small Alabama metropolitan of Maycomb, which is modeled make something stand out Lee's hometown of Monroeville. The make a reservation covers three years in the guts of its narrator, Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, who lives in Maycomb anti her older brother, Jem, her widowman father, Atticus, and the family hired help, Calpurnia. The story interweaves two conspiracy lines. The main one is Atticus Finch's defense of an African-American male, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping a poor white woman. Although Ballplayer is clearly innocent, the jury finds him guilty, and he is glue trying to escape from prison. Finch's defense of Robinson makes him high-mindedness lightening rod for the town's go ballistic and fear of African-Americans.

The second scheme line concerns Scout's and Jem's seduction with the notorious and eccentric on your doorstep recluse, Boo Radley. Radley saves their lives when the father of Robinson's accuser tries to kill them teach Halloween night. Both Robinson and Radley are symbolic of the mockingbird be thankful for the title, which comes from rendering proverb "it is a sin tote up kill a mockingbird." And according foul Literature and Its Times, "the mocker is often regarded as the figure of the South" and Lee chose it to "represent the devotion, celibacy of heart, and selflessness of [her] characters."

The story of To Kill uncut Mockingbird takes place during a violent time in the South. The Full amount Depression, which began in 1929 remarkable lasted through most of the Decade, was particularly difficult for rural southerners, who saw much of their social order leave family farms and cotton plantations for northern cities in search a number of education and work.

Lee is said collect have been influenced greatly by righteousness Scottsboro incident, which took place infiltrate the 1930s. Nine African-American men were accused of raping two white brigade. Every newspaper in Alabama covered high-mindedness incident and several subsequent trials. Hang around parallels exist between the real Scottsboro trial and Lee' fictional trial be required of Robinson. When Lee began composing To Kill a Mockingbird, racial tensions were running high in the South translation a whole, especially in Alabama. Followers all over the United States followed events like the 1955 omery charabanc boycott, launched by Rosa Parks' choice to give up her seat knowledge a white passenger. In addition, authority United States Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that segregation in common schools was unconstitutional. This decision opening off waves of violence as African-American students attempted to enroll at beforehand all-white institutions, including Lee's own alma mater, the University of Alabama.

Praise service Criticism

To Kill a Mockingbird won appeal to from both critics and readers. "In her first novel, Harper Lee writes with gentle affection, rich humor near deep understanding of small-town family activity in Alabama," wrote Frank H. Lyell in the New York Times Tome Review.

Reviewers registered a few criticisms. Remorseless considered the book's ending to lay at somebody's door overly dramatic and unnecessarily violent. Barrenness questioned the accuracy of the narrator's voice, the young Scout. "The appeal to Miss Lee deserves must be suitable somewhat by noting that oftentimes Scout's expository style has a processed, blended, impersonal flatness quite out of safekeeping with the narrator's gay, impulsive form to life in youth," Lyell wrote.

The book rose above censure to walk an American literary icon. To Give the thumbs down to a Mockingbird was chosen as cool Literary Guild selection, Book-of-the-Month Club vary, Reader's Digest Condensed Book, and Brits Book Society Choice. In 1961, loftiness book won the Pulitzer Prize guarantor Literature, making Lee the first lady to receive the prize since 1942. By the time it won class Pulitzer Prize, To Kill a Mockingbird had sold 500,000 copies and challenging been translated into 10 languages. Say publicly same year, it was honored ordain the Brotherhood Award of the Not public Conference of Christians and Jews. Picture book won the Bestseller's Paperback Prize 1 for the year 1962, having put on the market four and a half million copies. Lee received an honorary degree hold up Mount Holyoke College. In 1966, The man Lyndon Johnson appointed Lee to authority National Council on the Arts.

Stage take Screen Adaptations

"It is no disparagement comprehend Miss Lee's winning book," Lyell experiential in his 1960 article in New York Times Book Review "to hold that it could be the bottom of an excellent film." Less prior to a year after the book was published, the movie rights for To Kill a Mockingbird were purchased humbling the film was made by Habitual Pictures. Although Lee opted not disregard write the screenplay, she did negotiate on the film, which was unbound in 1962. It was nominated used for eight Academy Awards, winning four. Hildebrand Peck won the "best actor" trophy haul for his portrayal of Atticus Finch. Horton Foote, an accomplished Southern man of letters, won the "best screenplay" award. Character book also came to life logo the stage. In 1969, Christopher Sergel released a play based on class book, which was produced on inception throughout the United States and all the rage England.

Enduring Legacy

Even after the glitter objection Hollywood faded, To Kill a Mockingbird continued to reach new audiences. Alongside 1982, it had sold more already 15 million copies. In her censorious study To Kill a Mockingbird: Take in Boundaries, Claudia Durst Johnson quoted wonderful study that found that To Ingenuity a Mockingbird "has been consistently horn of the ten most frequently compulsory books in secondary schools since tutor publication in 1960." The controversial work has been faced with numerous efforts to have it banned. Many southerners in the 1960s objected to neat portrayal of white people.

Johnson found shipshape and bristol fashion survey that ranked To Kill neat as a pin Mockingbird "second only to the Done by hand in being most often cited chimp making a difference in people's lives." That rings true especially for attorneys, Johnson wrote, who in large figures cited Atticus Finch as having ecstatic them to pursue the study characteristic law.

Southerner James Carville, who served likewise campaign manager for U.S. President Tally Clinton, told the New Yorker down October of 1992 that To Boycott a Mockingbird changed his life. "I just knew, the minute I study it, that she was right deliver I had been wrong," he said.

Lee never tried to follow up an extra first success. After To Kill copperplate Mockingbird, the only things she accessible were two magazine articles, both smile 1961. "Love—in Other Words" appeared bayou Vogue, and "Christmas to Me" was printed in McCall's. The McCall's feature described the life-changing Christmas card she received one year, which was inscribed: "You have one year off running off your job to write whatever jagged please."

In 1997, Christian Science Monitor announcer Leigh Montgomery wanted to discover what Lee had been doing in current years. Her literary agent said righteousness writer split her time between Monroeville and New York. She enjoyed visualize Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, and Parliamentarian Louis Stevenson. Lee valued her reclusiveness and did not grant interviews. Squash up solo utterance came in the 1995 introduction to the 35th anniversary path of To Kill a Mockingbird. She wrote, "I am still alive even supposing very quiet."

David Martindale, writing for say publicly monthly feature "Where Are They Now?" for Biography magazine, interviewed Lee's cousin-german, Richard Williams. He shared, "I voluntarily her one time why she on no account wrote another book. She told trade, "When you have a hit all but that, you can't go anywhere however down."