|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
May 19, 2012 |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Harper Lee (born April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, as Nelle Harper Lee) is an List of novelists from the United States|American novelist, best known for her 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction|Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee was the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, Amasa Lee, was a descendant of American Civil War|Civil War General Robert E. Lee and was a lawyer and newspaper editor in Monroeville who had served as state senator between 1926 and 1938. A voracious reader and admitted tomboy, Harper and her siblings and friends improvised imaginative adventures. "We had to of use our own devices in our play, for our entertainment. We didn't have much money... We didn't have toys, nothing was done for us, so the result was that we lived in our imagination most of the time. We devised things; we were readers and we would transfer everything we had seen on the printed page to the backyard in the form of high drama." After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Harper attended the female Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery, for only a year before transferring to law school at the University of Alabama in 1945 where she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, Rammer-Jammer. Though she did not complete the requirements of her law degree, she pursued studies for a year in Oxford, United Kingdom|England, before moving to New York, New York|New York in 1950. She worked for a while in New York as an airline reservation clerk, but soon, with the emotional and financial support of friends, determined to pursue a career in writing. In 1959, Lee worked with Truman Capote as an assistant for his novel, In Cold Blood, traveling with him to Holcomb, Kansas, to conduct research. Capote credited her with "secretarial work", and dedicated the book to her. She eventually put together a series of her own short stories about life in the Southern United States|South, and submitted them to the J. P. Lippincott & Co. for publication in 1957. Encouraged by her editor, Tay Hohoff, to work the stories into a novel, she produced To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960. To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate best-seller and won her great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller today and has earned a secure place in the canon (fiction)|canon of American literature. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll conducted by the Library Journal. Lee was overwhelmed with the immediate success of this first book. In a conversation with Roy Newquist for his 1964 book Counterpoint, she revealed her reaction:
Since that time, Lee has granted virtually no requests for interviews or public appearances, and with the exception of a few short essays, has published no further writings. She favorably reviewed the 1962 Academy Award-winning screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird by Horton Foote, saying that, "If the integrity of a film adaptation can be measured by the degree to which the novelist's intent is preserved, Mr. Foote's screenplay should be studied as a classic." She also became a close friend of the late star Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, the hero of the book. She remains close to the actor's family, and Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Voll, is named for her. Truman Capote, a lifelong friend and childhood neighbor, was allegedly the inspiration for the character of Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. Capote frequently implied that he himself had written a considerable portion of the novel, and at least one person, Pearl Kazin Bell, an editor at Harper's who cited Lee's failure to produce another novel, has gone on record supporting his co-authorship. She has been known to split time between an apartment in New York and her sister's home in Monroeville. She has accepted honorary degrees, but has declined to make speeches. At the urging of Peck's widow Veronique, Lee traveled by train from Monroeville to Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles, in 2005 to accept the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award. Lee's withdrawal from public life has prompted persistent but unfounded speculation that new publications are in the works. Similar speculation has followed contemporaneous American writers J.D. Salinger and Ralph Ellison. She has never married or had children.
US-writer-stub Category:Women writers|Lee, Harper Category:1926 births|Lee, Harper Category:American novelists|Lee, Harper Category:Pulitzer Prize winners|Lee, Harper Category:Alabama writers|Lee, Harper ca:Harper Lee de:Harper Lee eo:Harper LEE he:נל הרפר לי ja:ハーパー・リー fr:Harper Lee This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Harper Lee".
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
![[F]](/images/site.gif){kind=small}
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
All informatin on the site is © www.woman-health.org 2002-2011. Last revised: January 2, 2011 Are you interested in our site or/and want to use our information? please read how to contact us and our copyrights. To let us provide you with high quality information, you can help us by making a more or less donation: |