“She changed the world with To Kill A Mockingbird”.
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As we grew up, we learned that the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel published in 1960 had touched the hearts of people the world over, that they were passing it on to their children just as we were passing it on to ours.
Robert Duvall, who portrayed Boo Radley in the 1962 film, told The Hollywood Reporter: “Harper Lee was a fine person and a wonderful writer”.
To Kill A Mockingbird.
The family of author Harper Lee says in a statement that they will “miss her dearly”.
“She lived her life the way she wanted to – in private – surrounded by books and the people who loved her”, he added.
She counted author Truman Capote among her childhood friends, and worked as an assistant on his novel “In Cold Blood”, which examined a multiple killing in Kansas, and was dedicated to Lee.
Through all the fanfare, Harper Lee remained quiet, rarely seen or heard from.
But Lee was a notorious recluse, and refused to talk about her life and work publicly for decades.
In 2007, she received the President George W. Bush the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest United States civilian award. The novel blended a young Southern girl’s coming-of-age-story with a provocative account of her attorney father’s losing struggle to defend an African-American man falsely accused of rape.
“Watchman” was written before “Mockingbird“, but was set 20 years later, using the same location and numerous same characters. According to The Telegraph, however, Lee’s lawyer said last July that she had found more pages in Lee’s safety deposit box, where she claimed to have found the Go Set a Watchman manuscript earlier. “I re-read “To Kill a Mockingbird” during my trial”.
The Alabama native wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the defining pieces of literature that focuses on the racial injustices that existed in the South during the existence of Jim Crow laws.
It was more than her words, however, that pulled together her public image.
In one of the few interviews she ever granted, she offered a glimpse into her thoughts, saying “I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me”.
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The daughter of a lawyer, she studied law in Alabama then moved to NY aged 23 and worked as an airline reservation agent before taking a year off to write. But we know that’s not true.
