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Pulitzer Prize winning author Nelle Harper Lee, who is best known for her 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, wrote only two novels during her lifetime. Despite the amazing success of her first novel, the author would not publish any other work for almost the entirety of her life, coming out with a sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird in Go Set a Watchman, a year prior to her demise.
Even though she had a small literary career, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 for her contribution to literature. Harper Lee breathed her last on February 19, 2016. She was 89. To Kill a Mockingbird, which was declared by the Library Journal as being the best novel of the 20th century, not only deals with issues of rape and racial inequality, but to the credit of the author is also noted for its warmth in tone as it celebrates the father-daughter bond and humour.
Harper Lee’s works are replete with memorable and thought provoking dialogues. Here are a few quotes attributed to the author.
• You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.
• Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
• I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
• The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
• People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
Speaking about the success of To Kill a Mockingbird in a 1964 interview to Newquist, Lee had famously said she didn’t expect any sort of success and was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of critics.
However, the author had added that she was hoping someone would like it enough to encourage her.
On the author’s fourth death anniversary, here are some interesting facts about her:
1. Nelle was her grandmother’s name spelled backwards
2.One of Lee’s closest friends was another famous author, Truman Capote, who wrote the books Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. In fact, Lee travelled with Capote to Holcomb, Kansas to research about the murder which led to the book In Cold Blood. Through Capote, Lee met music composer and lyricist Michael Brown. The lyricist and his wife Joy went on to give Lee the gift of a year’s financial support in 1956 to pursue her literary career.
3. The tomboy Scout of the novel who is the daughter of a respected small-town Alabama attorney was based on Lee, while Scout’s friend Dill was inspired by her childhood friend and neighbour Capote.
4. Though Go Set A Watchman, which was published in 2015, was promoted as a sequel of To Kill A Mockingbird, it was later accepted as being a first draft of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel.
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