by Lília
Harper Lee would have turned 100 today, 28 April 2026. Born in Alabama, she was a childhood friend of Truman Capote, and they had many interactions during their lives. She is mostly known for her first – and for a long time, only – novel To Kill a Mockingbird. A novel that would cast a very long shadow over her life.
Born Nelle Harper Lee, she studied law but never graduated. In 1949 Lee decided to move to New York and dedicated her free time to writing while working at a bookstore, and later as an airline reservation agent. She published a few short stories and in 1956 found the agent with whom she would work for many decades until his death. After many rejections from different publishers, in 1957 Lee was accepted by a small publisher after presenting a manuscript that would end up becoming To Kill a Mockingbird. This was not her first manuscript, but it was the first published novel. With it, she won many different literary prizes. It was published in 1960, and Lee didn’t expect the success it became. As a very private person, the success of Mockingbird was as terrifying as if it had been a flop.
Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird became an instant bestseller, was acclaimed by critics, and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. Lee helped with the manuscript for the movie of the same title, released in 1962, and was very satisfied with the result. The novel also became quite controversial among more conservative people and, at a certain point, was almost banned as “immoral literature.” She then responded to that idea with a letter in which she said:
“Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is “immoral” has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.” (Wikipedia)
After the release of the novel, Lee did a lot of book promoting and gave many interviews. Being such a private person, she found the travels for promoting the book difficult. After winning the Pulitzer Prize and becoming such a success, she became more reclusive, gave very few interviews, and made most of her public appearances to receive awards.
For many years, she published only a few articles and no other novels, and she lived from the royalties of Mockingbird. Until her first manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, was found in 2014 by an editor of HarperCollins, the publishing house that ended up buying her old publisher. That editor couldn’t believe what he had in his hands, but while reading it, he realized that it was indeed Harper Lee’s voice written on those pages. He then got in touch with 88-year-old Lee, and the book was released in 2015 as a sequel to Mockingbird. In Watchman Scout returns to her old town as an adult, 20 years later.
Harper Lee died in 2016 at 89 years old, after the successful release of Watchman.
In 2025 a third book was posthumously published, The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays, a collection of 8 new pieces found in her old New York apartment and 8 pieces previously published between 1961 and 2006.
If you’d like to know more about this fascinating, very private author, Charles J. Shields wrote her biography in Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee.
Casey Cep wrote another biography, Furious Hours, where she tells the story Harper Lee wanted to write but didn’t.
In the series American Masters, PBS made a beautiful documentary about her life that you can watch here.
