Harper Lee’s 100th Birth Anniversary

Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville Alabama on April 28^th, 1926. She is descended from Civil War commander, Robert E. Lee, but would become famous in her own right and one of America’s biggest literary icons.  

Lee studied at Huntingdon College for a year before transferring to the Alabama School of Law and then studied as an exchange student at Oxford University in London, although she left the University of Alabama just before completing her law degree. She moved to New York city in 1950 and worked for few years for a couple of airlines before getting a loan from her friends to be able to take time to dedicate to write a novel, her first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

In 1961, To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for literature and at that point had already been translated into ten languages and had sold 500,00 copies. Now, it has been translated into 40 languages and has sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

The novel has gone on to receive film, play and graphic novel adaptations. In the fall of 2001, To Kill a Mockingbird became the very first selection of Chicago Public Library’s One Book One Chicago.

For a long time, Lee hadn’t published any follow-up works. One of Lee’s friends, Tonja Carter, found her unpublished manuscript that was believed to have been long lost. It was eventually released in 2015 titled Go Set a Watchman the year before Lee passed in 2016. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of of her birth, here is a collection of works to enjoy.  

Her critically acclaimed debut novel published in 1960, To Kill A Mockingbird, set in the American south, tells the coming of age story of Scout Finch who watches her lawyer father, Atticus Finch, defend Tom Robinson, an African American man accused of a crime he didn’t commit.

Taking place two decades after Tom Robinson’s trial, Scout returns to her hometown in Alabama which is rampant with racial tensions. Now as an adult, Scout is forced to carve out her own moral identity in Go Set A Watchman.  

Historian Wayne Flynt shares an intimate look at his 25-year friendship with Nelle Harper Lee. Mockingbird Songs serves as a unique memoir, a collection of personal correspondence between the pair that takes readers deeper into the thoughts of the famed writer.

Artist Fred Fordham offers a new perspective on Lee’s classic in his adaptation, To Kill A Mockingbird. Using stunning visual art in color, the book will draw in readers who have yet to read the original as well as previous fans of Scout’s world.    

For lovers of midcentury cinema, Robert Mulligan's film adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird won three Academy Awards. Viewers follow lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) and his defense of Tom Robinson (Brock Peters).