Okla-homey
4/28/2009, 06:30 AM
April 28, 1926: Birthday of the Author of the Greatest American Novel of the 20th Century
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/1731/harpercetc.jpg
Harper Lee on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird
Nelle Harper Lee , 83 years ago today, was born in the lower Alabama town of Monroeville in 1926. She is the American author known for her 1960novel To Kill a Mockingbird. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007.
The youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served in the Alabama state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9712/harperfr4815.png
After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944–45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945–49), pledging the Chi Omega sorority.
While at Bama, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer. Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.
Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father.
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/6731/81702006.png
Harper Lee in her father's law office in Monroeville
Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the East 50th townhouse of her friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, she received a gift of a year's wages with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/1259/harperlee.jpg
Within a year, she had a first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. Published July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal.
The plot centers on Atticus Finch, a small-town lawyer in Alabama who defends a young black falsely accused of raping a white woman. The story is told by the lawyer's young daughter. The appeal of the novel lies in the author's ability to weave together the vivid eccentric characters of a small town, the observations of a sensitive child, and a plea for social justice.
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.
– Harper Lee, quoted in Newquist—1964
After completing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee accompanied Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to assist him in researching what they thought would be an article on a small town's response to the murder of a farmer and his family. Capote expanded the material into his best-selling book, In Cold Blood (1966).
On May 7, 2006, Lee wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey (published in O in July 2006). Lee wrote about her love of books as a child and her dedication to the written word: "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/4021/harperleemedal.jpg
On November 5, 2007, Lee was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush at a White House Ceremony. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award in the United States and recognizes individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/1731/harpercetc.jpg
Harper Lee on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird
Nelle Harper Lee , 83 years ago today, was born in the lower Alabama town of Monroeville in 1926. She is the American author known for her 1960novel To Kill a Mockingbird. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007.
The youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served in the Alabama state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9712/harperfr4815.png
After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944–45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945–49), pledging the Chi Omega sorority.
While at Bama, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer. Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.
Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father.
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/6731/81702006.png
Harper Lee in her father's law office in Monroeville
Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the East 50th townhouse of her friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, she received a gift of a year's wages with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/1259/harperlee.jpg
Within a year, she had a first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. Published July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal.
The plot centers on Atticus Finch, a small-town lawyer in Alabama who defends a young black falsely accused of raping a white woman. The story is told by the lawyer's young daughter. The appeal of the novel lies in the author's ability to weave together the vivid eccentric characters of a small town, the observations of a sensitive child, and a plea for social justice.
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.
– Harper Lee, quoted in Newquist—1964
After completing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee accompanied Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to assist him in researching what they thought would be an article on a small town's response to the murder of a farmer and his family. Capote expanded the material into his best-selling book, In Cold Blood (1966).
On May 7, 2006, Lee wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey (published in O in July 2006). Lee wrote about her love of books as a child and her dedication to the written word: "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/4021/harperleemedal.jpg
On November 5, 2007, Lee was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush at a White House Ceremony. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award in the United States and recognizes individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."