biography harper lee

(1926-2016)

Who Was Harper Lee?

In July 2015, Lee published her second novel, Go Set a Watchman , which was written before To Kill a Mockingbird and portrays the later lives of the characters from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. The youngest of four children, she grew up as a tomboy in a small town.

Her father was a lawyer, a member of the Alabama state legislature and also owned part of the local newspaper. For most of Lee's life, her mother suffered from mental illness, rarely leaving the house. It is believed that she may have had bipolar disorder.

In high school, Lee developed an interest in English literature. After graduating in 1944, she attended the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery. Lee stood apart from the other students—she couldn't have cared less about fashion, makeup or dating. Instead, she focused on her studies and writing. Lee was a member of the literary honor society and the glee club.

Transferring to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Lee was known for being a loner and an individualist. She did make a greater attempt at a social life there, joining a sorority for a while.

Pursuing her interest in writing, Lee contributed to the school's newspaper and its humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer , eventually becoming the publication's editor.

In her junior year, Lee was accepted into the university's law school, which allowed students to work on law degrees while still undergraduates. The demands of her law studies forced her to leave her post as Rammer Jammer editor.

After her first year in the program, Lee began expressing to her family that writing—not the law—was her true calling. She went to the University of Oxford in England that summer as an exchange student.

Returning to her law studies that fall, Lee dropped out after the first semester. She soon moved north to follow her dreams to become a writer.

Early Writing Career

In 1949, a 23-year-old Lee arrived in New York City . She struggled for several years, working as a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines and for the British Overseas Air Corp (BOAC).

While in the city, Lee befriended Broadway composer and lyricist Michael Martin Brown and his wife Joy. In 1956, the Browns gave Lee an impressive Christmas present—to support her for a year so that she could write full time. She quit her job and devoted herself to her craft.

The Browns also helped her find an agent, Maurice Crain. He, in turn, was able to get publisher J.B. Lippincott Company interested in her work. Working with editor Tay Hohoff, Lee worked on a manuscript set in a small Alabama town, which eventually became her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Friendship With Truman Capote

One of Lee’s closest childhood friends was another writer-to-be, Truman Capote (then known as Truman Persons). Tougher than many of the boys, Lee often stepped up to serve as Truman's childhood protector.

Truman, who shared few interests with boys his age, was picked on for being sensitive and for the fancy clothes he wore. While the two friends were very different, they both had difficult home lives. Truman was living with his mother's relatives in town after largely being abandoned by his own parents.

While in New York City in the 1950s, Lee was reunited with her old friend Capote, who was by then one of the literary rising stars of the time.

In 1956, Lee joined forces with Capote to assist him with an article he was writing for The New Yorker . Capote was writing about the impact of the murder of four members of the Clutter family on their small Kansas farming community.

The two traveled to Kansas to interview townspeople, friends and family of the deceased and the investigators working to solve the crime.

Serving as his research assistant, Lee helped with the interviews, eventually winning over some of the locals with her easygoing, unpretentious manner. Truman, with his flamboyant personality and style, had a hard time initially getting himself into his subjects' good graces.

During their time in Kansas, the Clutters' suspected killers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, were caught in Las Vegas and brought back for questioning. Lee and Capote got a chance to interview the suspects not long after their arraignment in January 1960.

Soon after, Lee and Capote returned to New York. She worked on the galleys for her forthcoming first novel while he started working on his article, which would evolve into the nonfiction masterpiece In Cold Blood .

The pair returned to Kansas for the murder trial. Lee gave Capote all of her notes on the crime, the victims, the killers, the local communities and much more.

Lee worked with Capote on and off on In Cold Blood . She had been invited by Smith and Hickock to witness their execution in 1965, but she declined. When Capote's book was finally published in 1966, a rift developed between the two collaborators for a time.

Capote dedicated the book to Lee and his longtime lover, Jack Dunphy, but failed to acknowledge her contributions to the work. While Lee was very angry and hurt by this betrayal, she remained friends with Capote for the rest of his life.

READ MORE: Harper Lee and Truman Capote Were Childhood Friends Until Jealously Tore Them Apart

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARPER LEE FACT CARD

Lee published two books in her lifetime: To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and Go Set a Watchman (2015). She also worked on and off with her friend Capote on his famed book, In Cold Blood (1966).

'To Kill a Mockingbird'

In July 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was published and picked up by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild . A condensed version of the story appeared in Reader's Digest magazine. The following year, the novel won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and several other literary awards. A classic of American literature, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages with more than a million copies sold each year.

The work's central character, a young girl nicknamed Scout, was not unlike Lee in her youth. In one of the book's major plotlines, Scout and her brother Jem and their friend Dill explore their fascination with a mysterious and somewhat infamous neighborhood character named Boo Radley.

The work was more than a coming-of-age story: another part of the novel reflected racial prejudices in the South. Their attorney father, Atticus Finch, tries to help a Black man who has been charged with raping a white woman to get a fair trial and to prevent him from being lynched by angry white people in a small town.

'Go Set a Watchman'

Lee published her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, in July 2015. The story was essentially a first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird and followed the later lives of the novel’s characters.

Go Set a Watchman was submitted to a publisher in 1957. When the book wasn't accepted, Lee's editor asked her to revise the story and make her main character Scout a child. The author worked on the story for two years and it eventually became To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lee's Go Set a Watchman was thought to be lost until it was discovered by her lawyer Tonja Carter in a safe deposit box. In February 2015, it was announced that HarperCollins would publish the manuscript on July 14, 2015.

Go Set a Watchman features Mockingbird's Scout as a 26-year-old woman on her way back home to Maycomb, Alabama, from New York City. Scout's father Atticus, the upstanding moral conscience of To Kill a Mockingbird , is portrayed as a racist with bigoted views and ties to the Ku Klux Klan .

In Watchman, Atticus tells Scout: "Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?”

The controversial novel and shocking portrayal of a beloved character sparked debates among fans, and offered literary scholars and students fodder for analyzing the author's creative process. Lee's second novel also broke pre-sale records for HarperCollins.

With reports of 88-year-old Lee's faltering health, questions arose about whether the publication was the author's decision. Lee issued a statement through Carter: "I’m alive and kicking and happy as hell with the reactions to Watchman ."

But even that message didn't put an end to questions: In a 2011 letter, Lee's sister Alice had written that Lee would "sign anything put before her by any one in whom she has confidence." However, others who had met with Lee stated that she was behind the decision to publish. Alabama officials investigated and found no evidence that she was a victim of coercion.

'To Kill a Mockingbird' Movie

Playwright Horton Foote wrote a screenplay based on the book and used the same title for a 1962 To Kill a Mockingbird movie adaptation. Lee visited the set during filming and did a lot of interviews to support the project.

The movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird earning eight Academy Award nominations and won three awards, including best actor for Gregory Peck 's portrayal of Finch. The character is said to have been based on Lee's father.

Later Years

In the mid-1960s, Lee was reportedly working on another novel, but it was never published.

In 1966, Lee had an operation on her hand to repair the damage done by a bad burn. She also accepted a post on the National Council of the Arts at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson . During the 1970s and '80s, Lee largely retreated from public life.

Lee spent some of her time on a nonfiction book project about an Alabama serial killer which had the working title The Reverend . This work, however, was never published.

Lee generally lived a quiet, private life, splitting her time between New York City and her hometown of Monroeville. In Monroeville, she lived with her older sister Alice Lee, a lawyer who the author called "Atticus in a skirt." Lee's sister was a close confidante who often took care of the author's legal and financial affairs.

Active in her church and community, Lee became famous for avoiding the spotlight of her celebrity. She would often use the wealth she had accumulated from her success to make anonymous philanthropic donations to various charitable causes.

In November 2007, President George W. Bush presented Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her "outstanding contribution to America's literary tradition" at a ceremony at the White House.

Her sister Alice once said about Lee, "Books are the things she cares about." With the assistance of a magnifying device—necessary due to her macular degeneration—Lee was able to keep reading despite her ailments.

Lawsuits and E-Publishing Deal

In May 2013, Lee filed a lawsuit in federal court against literary agent Samuel Pinkus. Lee charged that, in 2007, Pinkus "engaged in a scheme to dupe" her out of the copyright to To Kill a Mockingbird , later diverting royalties from the work. In September 2013, a settlement was reached in the lawsuit.

Later that year, Lee's legal team filed suit against the Monroe County Heritage Museum located in Monroeville for trying "to capitalize on the fame" of To Kill a Mockingbird and for selling unauthorized merchandise related to the novel. Lawyers for the author and the museum later filed a joint motion to end the suit, and the case was dismissed by a federal judge in February 2014.

That same year, Lee allowed her famous work to be released as an e-book. She signed a deal with HarperCollins for the company to release To Kill a Mockingbird as an e-book and digital audio editions.

In a release shared by the publisher, Lee explained: "I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. I am amazed and humbled that Mockingbird has survived this long. This is Mockingbird for a new generation."

Lee died on February 19, 2016, at the age of 89. Her nephew, Hank Connor, said the author died in her sleep.

In 2007, Lee suffered a stroke and struggled with various ongoing health issues, including hearing loss, limited vision and problems with her short-term memory. After the stroke, Lee moved into an assisted living facility in Monroeville.

Around the time of Lee’s death in 2016, it was announced that producer Scott Rudin had hired Aaron Sorkin to write a stage version of To Kill a Mockingbird . In March 2018, several months before the production's scheduled Broadway debut, Lee's estate filed a lawsuit on the grounds that Sorkin's adaptation significantly deviated from the original material.

A main point of contention was the play's portrayal of Finch, which reportedly showed him in early scenes as more in step with the oppressive racial feelings of the time, as opposed to the heroic crusader of the novel.

Rudin pushed back against the assertion that the characters were significantly altered, though he insisted he had leeway to adapt them to contemporary times. "I can’t and won’t present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics: It wouldn’t be of interest," he said. "The world has changed since then."

The portrayal of Atticus Finch was reportedly softened from someone “who drinks alcohol, keeps a gun and curses mildly” to an “honest and decent person.” The play hit Broadway in December 2018.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Harper Lee
• Birth Year: 1926
• Birth date: April 28, 1926
• Birth State: Alabama
• Birth City: Monroeville
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Harper Lee is best known for writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Go Set a Watchman,' which portrays the later years of the Finch family.
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• Oxford University
• Huntington College
• University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa
• Death Year: 2016
• Death date: February 19, 2016
• Death State: Alabama
• Death City: Monroeville
• Death Country: United States

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Harper Lee Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/harper-lee
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 31, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
• Simply because we are licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try and win.
• I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.
• People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
• Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself ... it's a self-exploratory operation that is endless.
• Things are always better in the morning.
• The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
• Everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowing.
• I would advise to anyone who aspires to a writing career, that before developing his talent, he would be wise to develop a thick hide.

Famous Authors & Writers

William Shakespeare

How Did Shakespeare Die?

Meet Stand-Up Comedy Pioneer Charles Farrar Browne

Francis Scott Key

Christine de Pisan

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

10 Famous Langston Hughes Poems

5 Crowning Achievements of Maya Angelou

10 Black Authors Who Shaped Literary History

The True Story of Feud:Capote vs. The Swans

Truman Capote

• Catalog and Account Guide
• Ask a Librarian
• Website Feedback
• Log In / Register
• My Library Dashboard
• My Borrowing
• Checked Out
• Borrowing History
• ILL Requests
• My Collections
• For Later Shelf
• Completed Shelf
• In Progress Shelf
• My Settings

Harper Lee Biography

“Nelle” Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. She grew up in Monroeville, a small town in southwest Alabama. Her father was a lawyer who also served in the state legislature from 1926–1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader. After she attended public school in Monroeville she attended Huntingdon College, a private school for women in Montgomery for a year and then transferred to the University of Alabama. After graduation, Lee studied at Oxford University. She returned to the University of Alabama to study law but withdrew six months before graduation.

She moved to New York in 1949 and worked as a reservations clerk for Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways. While in New York, she wrote several essays and short stories, but none were published. Her agent encouraged her to develop one short story into a novel. In order to complete it, Lee quit working and was supported by friends who believed in her work. In 1957, she submitted the manuscript to J. B. Lippincott Company. Although editors found the work too episodic, they saw promise in the book and encouraged Lee to rewrite it. In 1960, with the help of Lippincott editor Tay Hohoff, To Kill a Mockingbird was published.

To Kill a Mockingbird became an instant popular success. A year after the novel was published, 500,000 copies had been sold and it had been translated into 10 languages. Critical reviews of the novel were mixed. It was only after the success of the film adaptation in 1962 that many critics reconsidered To Kill a Mockingbird .

To Kill a Mockingbird was honored with many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and was made into a film in 1962 starring Gregory Peck. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It actually was honored with three awards: Gregory Peck won the Best Actor Award, Horton Foote won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar and a design team was awarded an Oscar for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration B/W. Lee worked as a consultant on the screenplay adaptation of the novel.

Author Truman Capote was Lee’s next-door neighbor from 1928 to 1933. In 1959 Lee and Capote traveled to Garden City, Kan., to research the Clutter family murders for his work, In Cold Blood (1965). Capote dedicated In Cold Blood to Lee and his partner Jack Dunphy. Lee was the inspiration for the character Idabel in Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He in turn clearly influenced her character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird .

Harper Lee divides her time between New York and her hometown of Monroeville, Ala., where her sister Alice Lee practices law. Though she has published no other work of fiction, this novel continues to have a strong impact on successive generations of readers.

Harper Lee had many childhood experiences that are similar to those of her young narrator in To Kill a Mockingbird , Scout Finch:

Harper Lee’s Childhood

• She grew up in the 1930s in a rural southern Alabama town.
• Her father, Amasa Lee, is an attorney who served in the state legislature in Alabama.
• Her older brother and young neighbor (Truman Capote) are playmates.
• Harper Lee is an avid reader as a child.
• She is 6 years old when the Scottsboro trials are widely covered in national, state and local newspapers.

Scout Finch’s Childhood

• Her father, Atticus Finch, is an attorney who served in the state legislature in Alabama.
• Her older brother (Jem) and young neighbor (Dill) are playmates.
• Scout reads before she enters school and reads the Mobile Register newspaper in first grade.
• She is 6 years old when the trial of Tom Robinson takes place.

Related Information

Powered by BiblioCommons.

BiblioWeb: webapp06 Version 4.18.0 Last updated 2024/03/26 09:59

FAMOUS AUTHORS

Harper Lee is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the brilliantly written To Kill a Mocking Bird. The book instantly became a best seller internationally and was also adapted into an Academy Award winning movie in 1962. Although Harper’s contribution to literature has been limited to one novel only, she has achieved what many writers can only wish for even after authoring volumes.

Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. Lee’s father was a lawyer and member of the Alabama State Legislature. Her mother was mentally unwell and mostly stayed inside the house. Lee was the youngest child of her parents with 3 siblings. Most part of her childhood was spent in a small town being a tomboy with close friend Truman Capote who too became a famous writer. Unlike girls of her age, Lee was as tough as boys and always stood up for Truman when he was being picked on by other boys for being sissy and dressing up in fancy clothes. Their exemplary childhood companionship was to grow stronger into a lifelong friendship.

Lee’s interest in literature grew while she was in high school. She attended the Huntingdon College in Montgomery where she was an exceptional student focusing on studies and writing instead of makeup, clothes and dating like other girls. She was also a member of the glee club and the literary honorary society. Lee then enrolled in University of Alabama, where she studied Law from 1945 to 1949. Pursuing her interest in writing, Lee wrote for a humorous school magazine, Rammer Jammer and later became its editor. However, the pressure of her law studies forced her to leave the editor’s position. She also went to Oxford University as an exchange student for one year. Soon after returning from Oxford, Lee realized her career was in writing and not law. She dropped out of the university and moved to New York in 1950 where worked at an airline as a reservations officer. It is during her time in New York that she wrote and finished the manuscript of To Kill a Mocking Bird in 1959.

While in New York, Lee was also reunited with Truman Capote , her childhood friend who had also turned into a writer. Lee assisted Capote in writing an article about the murder of four members of a family for The New Yorker. Lee contributed immensely to Capote’s assignment. She gave him all her notes on the crime story, victims and the trial. The article later evolved in Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood.

When To Kill a Mocking Bird was published in 1960, Lee instantaneously became a literary legend. In addition to a short version of the story being published in The Reader’s Digest, the book was chosen by the Literary Guild and also picked up by the Book of the Month Club. Many more awards followed and in 1961, the book won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.

Although Lee was reported to be working on a second novel, no other novel by Lee was ever seen in print again. On November 6, 2007, President George W. Bush presented to Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her services to literature. She was also awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 2010. Refusing to appear for interviews or anything to do with her popular novel, Lee now lives a quiet life in Monroeville.

Buy Books by Harper Lee

Recent Posts

• 10 Famous Russian Authors You Must Read
• 10 Famous Indian Authors You Must Read
• 10 Famous Canadian Authors You Must Read
• Top 10 Christian Authors You Must Read
• 10 Best Graphic Novels Of All Time
• 10 Best Adult Coloring Books Of All Time
• 10 Best Adventure Books of All Time
• 10 Best Mystery Books of All Time
• 10 Best Science Fiction Books Of All Time
• 12 Best Nonfiction Books of All Times
• Top 10 Greatest Romance Authors of All Time
• 10 Famous Science Fiction Authors You Must Be Reading
• Top 10 Famous Romance Novels of All Time
• 10 Best Children’s Books of All Time
• 10 Influential Black Authors You Should Read
• 16 Stimulating WorkPlaces of Famous Authors
• The Joy of Books

(92) 336 3216666

[email protected]

Harper Lee was an American author of two best-selling novels of the time. She comes from a small town Maycomb located in the south of American.  But this ordinary southern background does not stop her to climb the zenith of literature and comes out as a voice for the suffering of black people in America. She has depicted the way black people are politically victimized and thrown into the shackles of hardships and difficulties.

Harper Lee was a graduate of the University of Alabama. Because of her excellence in writing and true depiction in art, she has been awarded honorary Ph.D. degrees twice by different universities. She has received the highest civilian awards by the American government. She has also been awarded the highest medal for arts by the government of America. Her greatest wish was to remain secluded and this contributed to her non-wed life and she died silently at the age of 89.

A Short Biography of Harper Lee

Nelle Harper Lee was an American novelist. She was born on 28 th April 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She was the youngest daughter of Frances Cunningham Finch Lee and Amasa Coleman Lee. She had three siblings: Alice F. Lee, Louise Lee Conner, and Edwin Lee. Her full name was Nelle Harper Lee but her parents selected Harper as her addressing name. It was selected to pay tribute to Dr. William Harper of Selma. The said Doctor saves the life of Louise, Harper`s sister.

She spent her childhood in Monroeville which is a very small town in the southwestern part of Alabama; U.S. Lee’s Father Frances served as an editor of a newspaper, a businessman, and served a state governing body from 1926–1938 as well. On the other hand, her mother was suffering from bipolar disorder and she could not go out of her home. Lee had seen her suffering and had an impact on her mother as well.

Since her childhood, Lee was a devoted reader and a bright student. She spent her childhood in the ways of tom-boys. She joined Monroe County High School in Monroeville. There she developed a taste for English Literature. Then she went to Huntingdon College. This is located in Montgomery. There she remained an active member of the literary society and the glee club. After attending college, she went to the University of Alabama. She completed her graduation from the very university at Tuscaloosa . In university, she became famous for being a lonely and separated student. 

In 1948 Lee was sent to a summer school at Oxford University in England in the European Civilization exchange program. She was supported and encouraged by her father for this trip. He wanted Lee to develop more interest in legal studies but she returned to the University of Alabama. There she got enrolled in Law but left the University six months prior to completion of her degree. In university, she developed her taste for writing and she started contributing to the magazines. Soon she became the editor of Rammer Jammer magazine. She convinced her parents that her future was not in law but in literature and writing.

In 1949, she came to New York when she was 23 years old. She started serving a reservation clerk at Easter Airlines and British Overseas Airways. During her stay in New York, she composed many short stories and essays but she published none among them. Later on, her agent motivated her to write. Her agent advised her to develop a short story into a novel. For this very reason, she resigned from her workplace and devoted her time to writing. She was financially supported by her friends Michael Martin Brown and his wife so that she could devote her energies and time to writing without being worried about finances.

In 1957, she presented the original draft of her novel to J. B. Lippincott Company. In spite of the fact that editors found the work excessively long-winded, they saw glimpses of success in the work and urged Lee to revamp it. In 1960, with the assistance of Lippincott proofreader Tay Hohoff, her first novel To Kill a Mockingbird was published.

Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Harper Lee as the president of the National Council on the Arts in 1966. Lee soon realized that her book became controversial because it dealt with the subject of racial discrimination. Thus she wrote a letter to the editor in 1966 to ban the novel. She also asked the editor to put it in immoral literature and not give it for another print.

After the publication of the novel, she became a popular figure. The media started interviewing her and inviting her to various talks and conferences. Harper Lee enjoyed it at the start and corresponded with the fans and followers but she realized that she was disturbing her. Thus, she went into her privacy and avoided all sorts of talks and interviews. She never granted permission for an interview. She even got an unlisted telephone connection so that fans could not reach her through this. She stopped replying to all sorts of letters as well. She spent around Forty-years in Manhattan.

In the mid-1960s, not long after publishing To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee went with her beloved companion Truman Capote to Holcomb, Kansas. She filled in as an assistant in research for Capote’s 1966 novel, In Cold Blood.

Lee additionally published three articles during the 1960s: “Love — In Other Words” in Vogue (1961), “Christmas to Me” in McCall’s (1961), and “When Children Discover America” in McCall’s (1965). She has received a few privileged doctorates, including one from the University of Alabama and another from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama.

In 1998, the Harper Lee Award for a Distinguished Alabama Writer was revealed by the official advisory group of the Alabama Writers’ Forum. This honor perceives a practiced author who was born in the state or who lived in Alabama during their early stages.

Lee was awarded the Alabama Humanities Award by the Alabama Humanities Foundation in 2002. Harper Lee was awarded the inaugural ATTY Award in 2005 in regard to positive depictions of Attorneys in her novel. She was awarded by Spector Gadon & Rose Foundation. She was also awarded the Los Angeles Public Library Award in 2005. Harper Lee was in Monroeville when she was asked by Veronique Peck, the widow of Peck, to travel to Los Angeles to receive this award.  

She was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Notre Dame. Harper Lee was conferred upon the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush on 5 th November 2007. This is the highest civilian award in the United States. In 2010, Lee was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama for excellence in arts.

.Harper Lee did not write more and explained the reasons for not writing more. She said that there are two reasons for it.  “One, I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again.”

Nelle Harper Lee died on 19 th February 2016 at the age of 89.

Harper Lee Published only two books in her novel. The first one was To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and Go Set a Watchman (2015). Harper Lee also collaboratively worked on In Cold Blood (1966) with Capote.

• To Kill a Mockingbird

It was published in July 1960. It became the Book-of-the-Month Club and honored by the Literary Guild as well. A brief version of the plot of this novel appeared in Reader’s Digest magazine. In 1967, it received the Pulitzer Prize. This novel has been translated into more than 40 languages of the world. it was adapted into a film in 1962. It was also awarded by the National Conference of Christian and Jews for the Brotherhood Award in 1962.

This novel is told predominantly from the point of view of Jean Louise (Scout) the daughter of white legal advisor Atticus Finch. Scout and her sibling, Jem, become familiar with the standards of racial equity and receptiveness from their father. They likewise build up the fortitude and the solidarity to follow their feelings in their associate and possible fellowship with a hermit, “Boo” Radley, who has been derided by the network.

Harper Lee’s Writing Style

Realistic language use.

The language Harper Lee uses in her novel is reasonable and realistic. She has precisely depicted what life resembled in a little country like Maycomb in the southern parts of America during the 1930s. Lee uses the conversational language of the locality to give her novels a touch of reality and realistic depiction. She has seen the attitude of Whites towards black and is very much aware of the humiliation of blacks through language. Thus, she has used the colloquial language of the society and the people living in that society. 

She is realistic in her use of language and has not never tried to be sophisticated while using language. She has done things for the reason to portray the actual people. If she had used embellished and sophisticated language in her novels this would have never highlighted the actual sufferings of black people.

Harper Lee’s utilization of language in the novel is changed in style and awesome in accomplishing her different scholarly purposes. Descriptive sections are wealthy in symbolism and tactile language. Her imagery and use of various environmental factors make the plot of her writing appealing to the readers. Besides, discourse is every now and again written in a vernacular style to mirror the characters’ personalities in content as well as in phrasing. 

The language Atticus utilizes mirrors his insight and training; Bob Ewell’s language uncovers his obliviousness. Additionally, the voice of Alabama is heard in numerous Southern articulations and expressions. In utilizing language so dexterously, Harper Lee recounts to a holding story, makes singular characters, and catches life in Maycomb. The language of the novel serves to create huge numbers of the neighborhood shading components in it.

Addition of her Own Color to Language

Despite the fact that Harper Lee’s composing style is practical and very clear but she is likewise ready to utilize it to cunningly make strain and tension when required in the course of her novels. She does not make it simple writing that has no charm; rather she adds the color of her genius while staying realistic and true to society. This can be found specifically in the last part of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, when Bob Ewell tries to assault Jem and Scout. ‘’I made one mammoth stride and wound up reeling: my arms futile, in obscurity, I was unable to keep my parity,” Scout tells the readers.

Use of Figurative Language

Harper Lee uses figurative language in her writing to make pictures in the minds of her readers. She likewise utilizes humorous language which is in some cases there to feature a character’s misconception of a specific circumstance. For example, when Bob Ewell doesn’t see a portion of the inquiries he is posed in court, particularly those concerning whether he is a left-handed person. As Scout tells the readers, Mr. Ewell went irately to the appointed authority and said he didn’t perceive what his being left-handed had to do with it, that he was a Christ-dreading man and Atticus Finch was exploiting him.

Narrative Selection

Harper Lee has utilized the first-person story with inside and out character detail to summon thoughtful and compassionate emotions inside the readers. Scout, a six-year-old young lady, is the storyteller of the story in To Kill a Mockingbird. However, this has not restricted the language that Lee has used to show expressions. 

This makes it evident to the readers that the book is composed of a grown-up scout who is reproducing her youngster hood. Lee has utilized language to speak to each character, for instance Burris Ewell utilizes foul words at whatever point conceivable which shows his poor class and absence of habits. Conversely Atticus is formal in his discourse, as his words are frequently astute with much incongruity.

Through the essential voice in the novel, Scout’s, Harper Lee makes the emotional incongruity that drives the novel. Through Scout’s eyes, and in her own language, situations develop for the readers to comprehend and decipher from their grown-up viewpoints. This frequently makes humor in the novel. Harper Lee’s thoughts of social uniformity and equity are communicated through Atticus’ respectability and through his youngsters’ developing mindfulness and extreme comprehension of conventionality and good conduct. 

From her point of view, the South as of now is a position of prejudice and unfeeling foul play, burdened by ages of custom and social class. In any case, she demonstrates it to be where fortitude and individual soul live and where change will happen as guardians like Atticus show their qualities to their kids.

Use of Tone

Tone is another significant artistic strategy utilized by Harper Lee in her novels. She uses her tone in a very artistic way. The tone of her novel changes as the plot advances ahead. Her tone also changes in regard to the changes in the surrounding environment of various characters. For example, Scout’s tone is utilized to recount the story in her first novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The tone is guiltless, virtuous, and silly. This shows the benevolence where Atticus has brought her up. 

Notwithstanding, as she grows up and encounters the malicious side of human instinct, her tone changes and turns out to be increasingly incredulous of the general public she lives with. The sentence of Tom torments her guiltless brain. She discovers the idea that Tom is honest. She also gets to know that he is indicted in light of the fact that he is Black blamed for assaulting a White young lady. Prejudice, indecencies in the general public are a portion of the topics that shape the tone of the novel from the storyteller’s perspective.

Use of Symbols

Harper Lee uses profound symbols to convey her subjects. She uses various symbols in her novels and the symbols also carry deep meanings. These symbols are not used for any amusement rather they play a pivotal role in the plot of the novels. She utilizes a “mockingbird” to speak to the great and virtue of the general public. For example, Miss Maudie clarifies that mockingbirds don’t do anyone any mischief. They simply sing calmly and along these lines it is evil to slaughter them. 

Mockingbird is utilized to speak to the great individuals in the general public wrongly charged or murdered. Tom Robinson portrays the decency that is wrongly charged and indicted and later murdered while attempting to get away from the jail. Boo Radley is another mockingbird; he shields the kids from the deadly Bob Ewell. The sheriff needs to ensure him since he is a mockingbird doing no mischief to anybody. Everything he did was to shield the blameless youngsters from genuine underhandedness. Ewell is an image of evil in the general public.

Works Of Harper Lee

• Bookreporter
• ReadingGroupGuides
• AuthorsOnTheWeb

The Book Report Network

Sign up for our newsletters!

Regular Features

Author spotlights, "bookreporter talks to" videos & podcasts, "bookaccino live: a lively talk about books", favorite monthly lists & picks, seasonal features, book festivals, sports features, bookshelves.

• Coming Soon

Newsletters

• Weekly Update
• On Sale This Week
• Spring Preview
• Winter Reading
• Holiday Cheer
• Fall Preview
• Summer Reading

Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:.

• Atticus Finch: The Biography: Harper...

Atticus Finch: The Biography: Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon

Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is one of the most influential novels of the 20th century. Countless young adults, coming of age when it was published in 1960, chose to become attorneys because of the character of Atticus Finch, portrayed by Gregory Peck in the movie based on Lee’s fictional account of her life growing up in Alabama. Adding to the aura of MOCKINGBIRD was Lee’s post-publication decision to live her life outside the public eye and to never write another book. Not until shortly before her death would a second novel, GO SET A WATCHMAN, be published. Shrouded in controversy and mystery, readers and reviewers were divided regarding WATCHMAN. Questions abounded, with the central debate raging over whether or not the portrayal of Atticus as a southern racist was inspired by the real Atticus Finch, Lee’s father.

In the first decades of the 21st century, there were many attempts to break through the mysteries of Lee’s life. Several unauthorized biographies released, and even those that had her cooperation became shrouded in controversy because her estate objected to some of the portrayals. Recently, an attempt to adapt MOCKINGBIRD to a new play resulted in litigation from her estate and a court settlement that will allow the show to open in New York later this year.

"Crespino’s scholarly and well-written history leaps to the top of the books you should read if you are a TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD devotee."

Joseph Crespino’s ATTICUS FINCH: THE BIOGRAPHY is a different take on the entire Harper Lee oeuvre. Rather than gossip, it is the work of a scholar of the American South. Crespino has written a biography of Strom Thurmond, as well as historical studies of southern culture during the years portrayed in MOCKINGBIRD and WATCHMAN. He brings a more scholarly and intellectual approach to a biography of A. C. Lee and Harper Lee that attempts to place their lives in the southern era that encompassed the racial revolution occurring in post-World War II America.

Roughly one-third of this 200-page book is devoted to the life of Amasa Coleman Lee. Crespino is a historian and scholar, and employs resource material previously unused by other biographers. They include letters from Lee’s publisher and the hundreds of editorials A. C. Lee wrote during his tenure as editor of The Monroe Journal , where he commented on a vast range of subjects covering state, national and even international issues. A. C. Lee was deeply engaged in the important events of his time. He had a sense of civic responsibility and a belief that the problems of America were also the problems of his tiny hometown. He was a devout Methodist and pillar of his community who would be elected to local and state offices. His formal education ended after eighth grade, but after working for one year in a law office, he read and studied for the Alabama bar exam and was admitted to the bar in 1915. Crespino concludes that while A. C. Lee was partially a model for the fictional Atticus Finch, he also was a man whose political views differed from those of his daughter.

The remainder of Crespino’s study is a scholarly discussion of Lee’s novels in the context of the racially evolving South. Crespino accepts the view that WATCHMAN was a first manuscript of what ultimately would be published as MOCKINGBIRD. From the original drafts to the conclusion of these books, events occurring in Southern states, now facing court-ordered integration of schools and other public facilities, changed Lee’s opinion of her beloved South as well as that of her own father. The Atticus Finch depicted in MOCKINGBIRD was partially the man she knew, but also the man she wished he could have been. Crespino notes changes in the two manuscripts that support an evolving view from Lee. It is a remarkable study of how MOCKINGBIRD changed and why those arguing that WATCHMAN never should have been published seem to have the better argument.

There have been many efforts to examine the private life of Harper Lee and the novel that made her so famous. Each have flaws that hamper the literary case they make. Crespino’s scholarly and well-written history leaps to the top of the books you should read if you are a TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD devotee.

Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman on May 18, 2018

Atticus Finch: The Biography: Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon by Joseph Crespino

• Publication Date: October 20, 2020
• Genres: Biography , History , Nonfiction
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books
• ISBN-10: 154164493X
• ISBN-13: 9781541644939

• Teen & Young Adult
• Biographies

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: $12.99 $12.99 FREE delivery: Saturday, April 13 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Buy used: $6.09

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee Paperback – Illustrated, July 14, 2015

Purchase options and add-ons.

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most widely read novels in American literature. It's also a perennial favorite in highschool English classrooms across the nation. Yet onetime author Harper Lee is a mysterious figure who leads a very private life in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, refusing to give interviews or talk about the novel that made her a household name. Lee's life is as rich as her fiction, from her girlhood as a rebellious tomboy to her days at the University of Alabama and early years as a struggling writer in New York City. Charles J. Shields is the author of the New York Times bestselling biography Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee , which he has adapted here for younger readers. What emerges in this riveting portrait is the story of an unconventional, high-spirited woman who drew on her love of writing and her Southern home to create a book that continues to speak to new generations of readers. Anyone who has enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird or Go Set a Watchman will appreciate this glimpse into the life of its fascinating author, which includes photographs of Harper Lee, her family, and the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck. I Am Scout is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

• Reading age 9 - 12 years
• Print length 288 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 2 - 7
• Lexile measure 1120L
• Dimensions 5.58 x 0.76 x 8.21 inches
• Publication date July 14, 2015
• ISBN-10 1250082218
• ISBN-13 978-1250082213
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

Editorial Reviews

“Readers will come away with the sense not only that they know the writer of [To Kill a Mockingbird,] but also that she is someone that they would quite like.” ― The Bulletin “An absorbing and easy narrative style.” ― Kirkus Reviews “A fascinating look at the unconventional Lee.” ― Booklist “A surprisingly fascinating read.” ― School Library Journal “A page-turner.” ― ElleGirl

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Square Fish; Illustrated edition (July 14, 2015)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250082218
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250082213
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 9 - 12 years
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1120L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 2 - 7
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.58 x 0.76 x 8.21 inches
• #77 in Teen & Young Adult Literary Biographies

About the author

Charles j. shields.

Charles J. Shields is an American biographer of Mid-Century American novelists.

In 1997, Shields left a career in education to write independently. Over the course of the next six years, he published 20 histories and biographies for young people. His first biography for adults, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee (Holt, 2006) went on to become a New York Times bestseller. "This biography will not disappoint those who loved the novel and the feisty, independent, fiercely loyal Scout, in whom Harper Lee put so much of herself," wrote Garrison Keillor in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. "As readable, convincing, and engrossing as Lee's literary wonder," said the Orlando Sentinel.

Two years later, Shields followed-up his biography of Lee with a young adult version: I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee, which received awards from American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults; Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year; Arizona Grand Canyon Young Readers Master List.

In 2009, with fellow biographers Nigel Hamilton, James McGrath Morris, and Debby Applegate, Shields co-founded Biographers International Organization (BIO), a non-profit organization founded to promote the art and craft of biography.

In November 2011, Shields published the first biography of Kurt Vonnegut, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life (Holt), described as an "incisive, gossipy page-turner of a biography," by Janet Maslin and an "engrossing, definitive biography" by Publishers Weekly in a starred review. It was selected as a New York Times Notable Book, and Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011.

In 2016, Lebowski Publisher in the Netherlands will publish John Williams: The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. Williams is the author of Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus, which won the 1972 National Book Award.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Start Selling with Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Advertisement

Supported by

Harper Lee and Her Father, the Real Atticus Finch

• Share full article

• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

By Howell Raines

• June 18, 2018

ATTICUS FINCH The Biography By Joseph Crespino 248 pp. Basic Books. $27.

When “Go Set a Watchman” was published in 2015, an Alabama lawyer called me with a catch in his voice. Had I heard that his hero Atticus Finch had an evil twin? Unlike the virtuous lawyer who saved an innocent black man from a lynch mob in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the segregationist Atticus organized the white citizens council, figuratively speaking, in Boo Radley’s peaceful backyard. Three years later, my friend still believes that Harper Lee was tricked, in her dotage, into shredding the image of perhaps the only white Alabamian other than Helen Keller to be admired around the world. Never mind that this better Atticus is fictional; my home state has learned to grab admiration where it can.

Atticus-worship is not confined to Alabamians who revere the saint portrayed in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and then enshrined in 1962’s movie version by a magisterially virtuous Gregory Peck. By winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and selling more than 40 million copies worldwide, Lee’s novel created a global role model for a virtuous life. Even the gifted Northern novelist Jonathan Franzen cited the original Atticus as the epitome of moral perfection in a New Yorker essay on Edith Wharton.

Although dismaying to some Lee fans, the belated publication of “Watchman ,” an apprentice work containing the germ plasm of “Mockingbird,” cast light on the virtues and limitations of the author and her canonical novel. It also opened the door to serious scholarship like “Atticus Finch: The Biography,” Joseph Crespino’s crisp, illuminating examination of Harper Lee’s dueling doppelgängers and their real-life model, Lee’s politician father, A. C. Lee. Crespino, who holds a wonderful title — he is the Jimmy Carter professor of history at Emory University — displays a confident understanding of the era of genteel white supremacists like A. C. Lee. He understands that the New South still labors, as Lee’s daughter did throughout her long, complicated life, under an old shadow. This book’s closely documented conclusion is that A. C. Lee, who once chased an integrationist preacher out of the Monroeville Methodist Church, and his devoted albeit sporadically rebellious daughter, Nelle Harper Lee, both wanted the world to have a better opinion of upper-class Southern WASPs than they deserve. These are the people Harper Lee and I grew up among — educated, well-read, well-traveled Alabamians who would never invite George Wallace into their homes, but nonetheless watched in silence as he humiliated poor Alabama in the eyes of the world.

This book opens a window into “Mockingbird’s” scrubbed-up Alabama of memory, into the literary politics of the modern South, and into the argument that existed in Lee’s imagination when she arrived at 19 on the University of Alabama’s campus in 1945 and when she died in a Monroeville nursing home in 2016 . Her student journalism seethes with outrage over Montgomery’s pack of political thugs, but it also reflects the signature neurosis of her class — that educated white Alabamians are looked down upon as ignorant rednecks because the state’s “good people” are unfairly demonized over the racial brutality that is only part of the Alabama story. What the world saw as a hideous carcinoma on Alabama’s face in the days of “massive resistance” was, in fact, only a wart on the public visage of respectable white segregationists struggling with an unfixable inheritance of white trash on the one side and a fractious black minority on the other.

[ Our review: “Why ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Matters” | Our review: “ To Kill a Mockingbird ” | The Life, Death and Career of Harper Lee ]

Lee’s fictional snapshot of a strait-laced lawyer gave Alabama a civic mythology it could live with, but non-Southerners may not appreciate the role of the “Mockingbird” industry in the region’s endless literary wars. Georgia still basks in the imperial grandeur of “Gone With the Wind .” Mississippians lord it over their Bama cousins because “Absalom, Absalom!” put William Faulkner on a lonely pinnacle no other Southern writer can scale. But when “Mockingbird” won the Pulitzer and then swept the Oscars in 1963, Alabama had what its psyche needed most — an internationally accepted statement that we are better than the rest of America (not to mentions its journalists, historians and preachers) has been willing to admit.

Crespino is not timid about exposing the fact that “Mockingbird” approvingly dramatizes the class bigotry that still prevails in white Alabama. Its corporate and landowning oligarchs monopolize economic and political power, but the state’s ills are always laid at the feet of lower-class whites like Bob Ewell and his troubled daughter Mayella. Peck’s spotless, prejudice-free version of Atticus appeared in New York movie theaters a month after Wallace delivered his “Segregation Forever” inaugural address. Thus did “the id and superego of the descendants of the Confederacy enter together the mainstream of American political and cultural life.”

In villainizing rednecks, Lee was doing what her generation of educated Alabamians was forced to do in the 1960s: showing where she stood on racial violence while begging the world for some leniency. There’s a nice question here for literary critics. Were Lee and, for that matter, Birmingham-born Walker Percy unwilling to surrender the vestige of Alabama-ness that haunts their novels — the conviction that the Southern gentry’s antique, upper-class posture of respectability actually mattered in the face of their crimes, first against Native Americans and then against enslaved blacks?

Crespino’s answer as to Lee is an unequivocal yes, and he links Lee’s split vision to the lifelong game of hide-and-seek between Nelle Lee, the down-home fisherman, and Harper Lee, the literary expat who was happiest in Manhattan. Jean Louise Finch, the protagonist of “Go Set a Watchman,” speaks for the worldly Lee when she condones integration with a people her father disdains, saying, “Atticus, the time has come when we’ve got to do right.”

But Crespino demonstrates that “To Kill a Mockingbird,” while it is the superior storytelling book, wobbles morally in comparison to “Watchman.” Atticus’s pedantic reverence for the rule of law communicates to Scout and Jem a message that has misled generations of “honorable white Southerners.” Atticus shows them “how one could be in Maycomb without being of it.” Atticus may have convinced the children, but if Harper Lee really believed that, why did she keep the railroad tracks hot between Alabama and New York?

Howell Raines, a former executive editor of The Times, is the author, most recently, of “The One That Got Away.”

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

Stephen King, who has dominated horror fiction for decades , published his first novel, “Carrie,” in 1974. Margaret Atwood explains the book’s enduring appeal .

The actress Rebel Wilson, known for roles in the “Pitch Perfect” movies, gets vulnerable about her weight loss, sexuality and money  in her new memoir.

“City in Ruins” is the third novel in Don Winslow’s Danny Ryan trilogy and, he says, his last book. He’s retiring in part to invest more time into political activism .

​​Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation,” is “wildly optimistic” about Gen Z. Here’s why .

Do you want to be a better reader?   Here’s some helpful advice to show you how to get the most out of your literary endeavor .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .