In short
The episode “Fan Favorite: Great American Authors | Harper Lee: Mockingbird | 6” recounts how Nell Harper Lee’s 1957 manuscript Go Set a Watchman was reshaped into To Kill a Mockingbird, then follows Lee’s later silence, the controversy around her legacy, and the eventual publication of Watchman in 2015.
Guests
none are interviewed; the episode is narrated with dramatized scenes and includes no named guest speakers.
Key claims
Tay Hohoff’s editing turned a long, autobiographical draft into a cohesive novel told through young Scout in the Great Depression; Mockingbird became an instant success, won the Pulitzer, and sparked national debate on racial injustice; Lee later struggled to publish again, possibly amid pressure and alcohol; Tanya B. Carter filed lawsuits and presented Watchman as an “unseen” manuscript.
Notable examples
Monroeville childhood details, Atticus defending Tom Robinson, Reader’s Digest/Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month promotion, Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s “Segregation now,” and Watchman’s adult Scout portraying an openly racist Atticus and Klan attendance.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Editor and the Manuscript
0:10 to 2:58
A senior editor discusses a young writer's rejected manuscript and realizes its potential.
“You're an editor at a distinguished literary publishing house in New York and one of the few senior women in the office.”
Introducing Harper Lee
4:10 to 5:45
The story of Harper Lee, her early life, and her submission of 'Go Set a Watchman'.
“In the spring of 1957, an aspiring writer named Nell Harper Lee submitted a manuscript entitled Go Set a Watchman to several New York publishers.”
Nell Harper Lee's Childhood
5:55 to 9:38
Exploring Harper Lee's upbringing in Alabama and her familial relationships.
“Unlike her older sisters, Alice and Louise, Nell quickly developed a reputation for rebellious behavior.”
Lee's Struggles in New York
9:41 to 14:01
Harper Lee's challenges as a writer in New York and the pivotal Christmas gift that changed her life.
“She wrote for both the student newspaper and humor magazine, and by the time she was a senior, Lee had begun to think it was writing that she'd like to pursue and not the law.”
Lee's Writing Journey Begins
14:01 to 18:25
Discover how Harper Lee committed to her writing journey after quitting her job.
“It seems the crowds have appreciated my songs more than usual.”
The Evolution of To Kill a Mockingbird
18:26 to 28:00
Learn about the transformation of Lee's manuscript into the iconic novel.
“As the manuscript continued to evolve, Lee retitled it Atticus.”
Harper Lee and Racial Injustice
28:00 to 31:04
Explore how Harper Lee's work highlighted racial issues in America.
“Suddenly, Lee felt she was suffering from the consequences of success—the fame, the publicity demands, the taxes—but not enjoying the fruits of it.”
The Struggles of Success
31:04 to 33:59
Learn about Lee's challenges with fame and her personal battles.
“But when Nell Lee opened her copy of the book, she was shocked by what she found.”
The Later Years of Harper Lee
35:03 to 42:05
Discover the events of Harper Lee's life after 'Mockingbird' and her later struggles.
“Later, they found her lying on the floor in her apartment, having suffered a severe stroke.”
The Complex Life of Harper Lee
42:05 to 43:07
Discover the contradictions and complexities of Harper Lee's life and career.
“and that she'd finally published that elusive second book.”
Show all 11 chapters
The Galveston Hurricane Warning
43:13 to 43:33
Learn about the critical decisions faced during the 1900 Galveston hurricane.
“But officials in Washington dismissed urgent warnings from Cuban forecasters who insisted it would become a deadly hurricane.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:10American History Tellers:Imagine it's the spring of 1957. You're an editor at a distinguished literary publishing house in New York and one of the few senior women in the office. You walk into a towering Art Deco building in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. Your shoulder strains under a heavy bag. You're carrying a 250-page manuscript, and it's a story that you can't get off your mind. After two decades in the business, you've established yourself as a trusted leader with a strong instinct for story and a talent for working with young writers. As you enter the office, you're greeted by a more junior employee named Marguerite.
0:48Good morning. Good morning. I was hoping I would run into you. I want to talk over that manuscript you passed over. The one by that young author from Alabama. Right, go set a watchman. I didn't think it was worth your time to read.
1:05American History Tellers:You're surprised. Marguerite has been working in publishing a few years, and you've come to rely on her to vet new writers before they get to your desk. But when you saw this manuscript in the rejection pile, something made you decide to give it a look. You decide to press her on her reasoning. Well, what made you think that? Well, for starters, it's far too long for a first novel. I agree, it's a bit long. But that's what good editors are for. Cutting. Honing a focus. All right, but the story was simply too autobiographical. And there's nothing tying all the various narrative arcs together. There's plenty to change about the book.
1:42We can agree on that. Right now, it reads more like a collection of anecdotes than a cohesive novel. But weren't you struck by the author's distinctive voice? It's hard to believe this 30-year-old writer hasn't published anything before. Not even a short story. I marveled at the prose and the nuanced depictions of setting.
2:04American History Tellers:Marguerite looks at you sheepishly. I suppose I hadn't noticed all that. And what about the characters? Don't you think there's a reason you felt it was autobiographical? The characters were so three-dimensional, so real. It's as if you and I could be standing in a room with them right now. Now Marguerite looks embarrassed. You aren't intending to scold her. You just want her to learn from the experience so you soften your tone. This manuscript is a perfect candidate for a publishing house like ours. With our help, I think the book could really become something. Let's get this writer to come in for a meeting.
2:42All right, I see what you're saying. I'll call her agent now.
2:47American History Tellers:You leave Marguerite and settle in at your desk, feeling a sense of relief that you didn't let her pass this manuscript over. You can't wait to meet this mysterious writer from Alabama. She may be the rare talent you've been looking for.
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4:09American History Tellers:From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers, our history, your story.
4:31American History Tellers:In the spring of 1957, an aspiring writer named Nell Harper Lee submitted a manuscript entitled Go Set a Watchman to several New York publishers. Editor Tay Hohoff saw the promise hiding within Lee's work. Over the next several months, with Hohoff's guidance, Lee would reshape her manuscript into a breakout novel to kill a mockingbird. This book was an instant success and soon ignited a countrywide debate about racial injustice, while giving many Northerners a window into small-town southern life. A New York Times reviewer said of Lee, here is a storyteller justifying the novel as a form that transcends time and place.
5:12American History Tellers:At that moment, Lee appeared to be a trailblazing new author at the start of her prolific career. But in the years to come, Lee would not publish another book. Soon after Mockingbird, Lee all but disappeared from public life. She stopped doing interviews and even shied away from lifelong friends. Decades later, when an old manuscript of hers suddenly appeared, no one knew what to believe. and a battle over her classic book and her legacy began. This is the story of Harper Lee, who wrote a narrative that gripped a nation only to lose control of her own. This is the final episode in our six-part series, Great American Authors, Mockingbird.
5:54American History Tellers:Nell Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama in April 1926, the youngest of four children. Unlike her older sisters, Alice and Louise, Nell quickly developed a reputation for rebellious behavior. She was known to horse around with boys on the playground, climb tall trees, and call her schoolteachers by their first names. In 1930, the town of Monroeville had just over 1 ,300 residents, an old hotel, and no library. The streets were unpaved, and the only places with plumbing were the jail and the courthouse. It was the era of the Great Depression, and Lee later recalled, we didn't have much money, we didn't have many toys to play with, so the result was we lived in our imaginations most of the time.
6:38American History Tellers:Lee's mother, Frances, never quite understood her youngest daughter. She had been raised in a genteel southern home, studying Latin and playing the piano at a girl's finishing school, not getting her pants dirty and tackle football. And during Nell's childhood, her mother began to suffer from what her family called a nervous disorder. Her drastic mood swings brought with them erratic behavior. Her mental illness kept her largely housebound and meant that Nell and her siblings came to primarily rely on their father, Amasa Coleman, or A.C. Lee, for stability. A.C. Lee was already in his fifties by the time Nell entered the first grade.
7:15American History Tellers:A lawyer and part owner of a local newspaper, he was often stoic and introspective in public. But at home, Nell and her siblings found him to be a loving father who encouraged their curiosity, and it was A.C. who gave Nell her first typewriter. Nell shared her prized typewriter with her next-door neighbor, a boy named Truman Streckfus Persons, who would later go by the name Truman Capote. Capote's mother moved him to Monroeville in the summer of 1930 to live with relatives when he was six years old and Lee was five. Even after his mother returned to take him to New York a few years later, he'd spend every summer back in Alabama.
7:53American History Tellers:So Lee and Capote became close friends, and could often be found playing jacks or reading Sherlock Holmes books in the treehouse between their family's homes. They also spent many an afternoon huddled around Lee's typewriter, writing stories with a Webster's dictionary in hand. And they would often hang around the local courthouse, too, where they'd sit in the second-floor gallery and watch Lee's father, A.C., argue cases below. A.C.'s southern heritage shaped his views. His father had been a Confederate soldier and was distantly related to General Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army.
8:28American History Tellers:A.C. opposed federal anti-lynching laws and condoned segregation until later in life. But A.C. Lee was vehemently opposed to the way justice was often carried out in places like Monroeville, at the hands of vigilante mobs or terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan. As a lawyer, A.C. Lee believed in the power of the law to bring justice. A few years before his daughter Nell was born, he tried his first criminal case, defending two black men accused of murdering a white shop owner. But the deck was stacked against the men before the trial even began. Lee had only two weeks to prepare his defense, and one of the victim's sons was allowed to serve on the jury.
9:08American History Tellers:The accused men were sentenced to death, and Lee never argued another criminal case.
9:16But A.C.
9:17American History Tellers:Lee did encourage his daughter Nell to pursue a career in law and follow in his footsteps as her older sister Alice had. And for a while, it seemed Nell might. After a year at a woman's college in 1945, Nell transferred to the University of Alabama's law program. There, she stood out from her sorority sisters as a short-haired, cigarette-smoking introvert who'd rather play golf by herself than socialize. She wrote for both the student newspaper and humor magazine, and by the time she was a senior, Lee had begun to think it was writing that she'd like to pursue and not the law. Then, just one semester short of her degree, Lee dropped out of college, much to her father's dismay.
9:57American History Tellers:She saved up some money by waitressing at the Monroeville Golf Club, then packed up her bags and moved north to try and make it as a writer, just like her childhood friend Truman Capote. Truman had skipped college and jump-started his career writing for the New Yorker magazine. By the summer of 1949, his first novel had already shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Basking in his success, he decided to spend that summer in Morocco, so he wasn't in New York in August of 1949 to welcome Lee when she arrived. So if Lee had dreamed of a seamless Monroeville-to-Manhattan story like Capote's, she was in for a rude awakening.
10:35American History Tellers:She couldn't get work as a full-time writer, so she took a job in a bookstore, then another as an airline reservation agent. It was barely enough to get by, and she soon found herself scavenging for loose change, checking parking meters for discarded coins. She lived off peanut butter sandwiches in a third-floor walk-up apartment without a stove or hot water. Lee spent much of her precious free time trying to write at a makeshift desk, which she constructed herself from an old door and some crates. But she didn't make much progress. She would later recall, contrary to what most people think, there's no glamour to writing.
11:10American History Tellers:In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time. All this made Lee's New York experience stand in sharp contrast to Capote's with his successful writing career and circle of creative artist friends. One of those fellow artists was a Broadway musical composer named Michael Brown, another Southern transplant. When Lee first arrived in New York, Capote had asked Brown to show her around and help her settle in. The two of them became fast friends. Lee began to share her writing with Brown and his wife Joy, and she soon became a regular at their townhouse on East 50th Street, bringing along the latest stories she'd been working on to read aloud to them.
11:47American History Tellers:And the couple was always impressed with what they heard. So in November of 1956, Michael Brown set Lee up with a literary agent he knew. After reading a batch of Lee's short stories, The agent told her she had real talent, but short stories were tough to sell. Instead, the agent advised her to try writing a novel. But with Lee's busy airline job, she was hard-pressed to find the time. The next month, the Browns insisted that Lee stay at their house so she wouldn't be alone during the holidays. And at Christmas, they would present her with a gift that would change Lee's life forever.
12:25American History Tellers:Imagine it's Christmas morning in 1956. Snow is coating the ground outside your 19th century townhouse in New York. You're a father of two eager toddlers who've been nagging you for days to let them open the carefully wrapped presents under the tree in your living room. You wake up and groggily head downstairs to light a fire in the fireplace. One of your kids races past you up the stairs to awaken your sleeping house guest, your good friend Nell Lee. A few minutes later, Nell comes down the stairs. Merry Christmas, Nell. Did you get some sleep? Yes, I was comfortable as always. This townhouse feels like home.
13:06American History Tellers:You give the children a nod and they begin to frantically unwrap their presents. Nell leans back on the sofa, enjoying the chaos. Then she points to two gifts tucked under the tree. Don't let the kids have all the fun. Why don't you see what treasures I scrounged up for you two? Nell smiles as you and your wife open your gifts. A portrait of a humorist for you and a collection of writing for your wife. But as the last gifts are opened, you notice a hint of disappointment spread across Nell's face. You smile and point to the tree. We haven't forgotten you. Look. Nell finds an envelope tucked into the pine boughs.
13:43American History Tellers:She looks confused as she reads what you've written inside. What does this mean? Just what it says. You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. I don't understand. Is this a joke? Far from it. We've had a good year. You know the whims of Broadway. It seems the crowds have appreciated my songs more than usual. We've been putting some of that money aside, and we think it's time we do something about you. What do you mean, do something about me? You're talented, Nell. And we believe in you. We just want to give you a shot to practice your craft, free from the burdens of everyday working life.
14:26Are you crazy? You don't have a year's salary to throw away. Who knows what could happen in that time? What if the children get sick?
14:36American History Tellers:We'll be fine. But consider it alone if you like. Just say you'll take it. Okay. I will. I don't know how to thank you. You're taking such a huge risk on me. Nonsense. It's not a risk. It's a sure thing. You look at Nell and know you've made the right choice. She already has a new glow, like your gift lit a match inside her. You can't wait to see what the next year will bring.
15:11American History Tellers:After the Browns' generous gift in December 1956, Lee promised herself, I would do my best not to fail them. She promptly quit her job at the airline and holed up in her apartment, telling a friend she wouldn't be leaving the house for the entire year. Lee called writing, The hardest thing in the world for me. Sometimes she spends six to twelve hours churning out just one page. Her focus on revisions made her a slow worker. In fact, she called herself more of a rewriter than a writer. But with nothing to distract her, Lee was able to quicken the pace of her work. She'd spent seven years in New York with little to show for them, but in just two months, by the end of February 1957, she'd drafted a novel.
15:54American History Tellers:The 250-page manuscript she turned into her agent described a young woman named Jean Louise, who returned to Alabama after spending some time living in New York. Her father, Atticus, was a lawyer, just like Lees, and the story was centered on issues of race and racism in a small southern town, which bore a distinct resemblance to her hometown of Monroeville. After reading it, Lee's agent sent along that manuscript to a respected publishing house called J.B. Lippincott, where it landed on the desk of Tay Hohoff, one of the company's few senior woman editors. Hohoff saw potential in the draft, and in the summer of 1957, she brought Lee in for a meeting.
16:34American History Tellers:Hohoff told Lee that the draft needed work, but it had promise. Lee spent another few months revising on her own, and by October, the editors at J.B. Lippincott were sold. They signed a deal with Lee and gave her a few thousand dollars advance to get the manuscript into publishing shape. Hohoff and Lee then spent the next six months working through revisions together. It was a slow and painstaking process. Later, Lee recalled getting so frustrated one night that she threw the pages she'd been working on out the window. But after Hohoff scolded her over the phone, Lee ran out into the cold and collected the discarded pages from the dirty New York snow.
17:12American History Tellers:In their revision process, Lee and Hohoff decided the story needed a new perspective. They framed their revised draft through Jean Louise's eyes and set it in the Great Depression, when she was still a child who went by the nickname Scout. To populate Scout's hometown, Lee pulled from characters she herself had known during her childhood. There was the mysterious neighbor down the street, Boo Radley, whom the kids try to coax out of his home. A loving black housekeeper, Calpurnia, who cared for Scout and her brother. a rambunctious best friend named Dill, who spent his summers in the house next door.
17:46American History Tellers:And at the heart of the story was a trial, which Lee said was a composite of all the trials in the world, but set at Monroeville's courthouse. In the story, Scout's father, Atticus Finch, defends a black man named Tom Robinson, who'd been falsely accused of raping a white woman. Despite the prejudice of many of his white neighbors, Atticus told his children, the one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. And when the jury chose to convict Robinson of the crime, the children learn a stark lesson about racial injustice. In their father's words, In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins.
18:26American History Tellers:As the manuscript continued to evolve, Lee retitled it Atticus. But by its third draft, she was calling it To Kill a Mockingbird. By the spring of 1959, Ho-Ha thought Mockingbird was ready to be published. As Lee waited to receive galleys of the book, she got a call from her friend Truman Capote. Capote's editor at the New Yorker had given him a new assignment, to go to Kansas and write about a wheat farmer, his wife, and two kids who had all been brutally murdered. Capote told Lee he needed a research assistant, and Lee enthusiastically signed up. Capote said the trip would take just a few days, but their visit to this small town in Kansas to investigate a murder would change both of the writers' lives and their relationship forever.
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21:23American History Tellers:Imagine it's late December of 1959. You're at home in your small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. And tonight, you and your husband are hosting two new guests who recently arrived in town, all the way from New York City. Right away, they struck you as an odd pair. The man instantly dominates the conversation, speaking in long monologues and rattling on about his famous friends. But the woman is more reserved, polite, with an underlying warmth. When she offers to help you in the kitchen, you're glad to have an excuse to step away from the others. Hmm. Smells great in here. How can I help? Why don't you put some condiments in those bowls over there?
Read the full transcript
22:04I'll check on the potatoes. It's a wonder how many ways you can cook a potato. And all of them are delicious. Back home, we always loved baked potato soup. Really? Potato soup doesn't strike me as a New York special. Oh, I'm not from New York. Just a recent transplant. I spent my life in Alabama, a little town called Monroeville. Hmm, a southern girl. That's right. I find my mind is never far from there. It's all I can seem to write about, and I still go back from time to time. How about you? Have you always lived in Holcomb? I was born in Selden and went to school in Kansas City. Spent a year in Topeka when Cliff was in law school.
22:47But I've always lived in Kansas. And you're a local reporter, is that right?
22:53American History Tellers:You're surprised. You know she and her friend are in town to dig into a legal case. They must know that your husband is the victim's lawyer. But just now, when you mentioned his law practice, she didn't take it as a chance to dig. Instead, she seems genuinely interested in you. Yes, I write a daily column for the Telegram. I took a few years off after having my first three kids, but it's great to be back on the job. You said you're a writer, too? Well, I'm trying to be. I've finally pulled enough together for a book, but it's been excruciating. I don't know how you're able to write every day. Doesn't your brain ever draw a blank?
23:37American History Tellers:You laugh, opening the oven to check on the duck roasting. I'm lucky to have an editor who lets me write whatever I please. Some days I moan about the trials of raising a family, and others I become an amateur comic. That sounds fun. Say, I hope you don't mind me saying so, but I think that bird needs a little longer in the oven. You smile. It's nice to have another woman around to lessen the load. and a working woman, no less, a fellow writer. By the time you return to the table to rejoin the group, you can't believe the two of you just met, because it feels like you've known her forever.
24:20American History Tellers:When Truman Capote arrived in Kansas, he couldn't have looked more out of place, dressed in a sheepskin coat, long scarf, and moccasins. Lee later recalled, those people had never seen anyone like Truman. He was like someone coming off the moon. His ego and his penchant for name-dropping rubbed people the wrong way. Lee, on the other hand, was approachable. She quickly began earning the trust of wives around town, like Dolores Hope, whose husband was the lawyer for the victim's family, and Marie Dewey, who was married to the detective appointed to the case, Agent Alvin Dewey. Soon, Agent Dewey warmed to Lee, too.
24:56American History Tellers:He recalled, She had a down-home style, a friendly smile, and a knack for saying the right things. If Capote came on as something of a shocker, she was there to absorb the shock. Lee was also careful and diligent in her reporting, and her work became crucial as Capote decided to turn his New Yorker article into a full-length book. She organized her observations into categories and drew timelines and diagrams to piece the story together. To help Capote recall a particular interview, she often wrote a little scene describing its setting. And she learned as many personal details about the family that had been killed as she could, even befriending local church ladies who gossiped with her.
25:35American History Tellers:The details she gleaned, which she shared with Capote, eventually helped him paint a rich portrait of each character in the book he would call In Cold Blood.
25:48American History Tellers:Back in New York, in March of 1960, Mockingbird was almost ready to hit shelves when Lee learned that Reader's Digest and the Literary Guild had selected it as the Book of the Month to offer their subscribers. This meant it would instantly be promoted to thousands of people. Lee was so overjoyed at the Literary Guild's rave review that she got a jaywalking ticket racing downtown to her agent's office to celebrate. Then in July of 1960, Mockingbird was finally published and quickly hit the New York Times and Chicago Tribune top ten bestseller lists. The New York Times review called Lee a fresh writer with something significant to say.
26:26American History Tellers:Then, within just six months of Mockingbird's publication, Lee had signed a deal with a Hollywood production company to turn it into a movie. And then, after 41 weeks on the bestseller list, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction writing. Lee was thrilled, but she wrote to a friend, The Pulitzer is one thing. The approval of my own people is the only literary reward I covet. As soon as she got word of the award, she phoned her sister Alice, hoping to take the pulse of reactions in Monroeville. But she needn't have worried. The county paper summed up the positive reaction. What happens in a small southern town when citizens learn that one of its natives has just become a Pulitzer Prize winner?
27:07American History Tellers:Well, the word travels fast. Telephones ring. Bulletins go on the radio. People jump in their automobiles and travel to the next block to tell their neighbors. There was no question. Monroeville and people who love Lee are proud of her and her work. Requests for interviews and letters from fans poured into Lee's mailbox. Truman Capote wrote to friends, Poor thing. She says she gave up trying to answer her fan mail when she received 62 letters in one day. But though Capote thrived in the spotlight, Lee felt overwhelmed by the sudden rush of attention. She didn't like talking to the press and kept her responses curt.
27:44American History Tellers:To field requests and manage her business affairs, Lee increasingly turned to her sister Alice. Alice Lee was 15 years older than Nell, and as a trained lawyer, she became her sister's de facto advisor and manager. It was Alice who, at the end of 1963, crunched the numbers on her sister's finances to find that much of Lee's earnings would have to go toward tax payments. Both sisters were shocked. Suddenly, Lee felt she was suffering from the consequences of success—the fame, the publicity demands, the taxes—but not enjoying the fruits of it. She told the Associated Press,
28:24American History Tellers:What's more, while Mockingbird was widely praised, its message of racial injustice sparked controversy. At the time of publication, the country was embroiled in the largest civil rights movement in U.S. history. That year, 1960, had seen the famous lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the forced integration of New Orleans elementary schools. And To Kill a Mockingbird explored race relations in the American South head-on. Lee painted a harsh picture of racial injustice, and the novel seemed to instruct white Southerners to reject racist views. But the book's message had its enemies.
28:59American History Tellers:Just days after Mockingbird was awarded Paperback of the Year in 1962, Alabama Governor George Wallace took to the state capitol steps and declared, Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
29:16American History Tellers:By 1964, two years after the publication of Mockingbird, Lee had only written a few more short articles. But she assured a reporter that she was still hard at work on her next novel. She told him, I would like to be the chronicler of something I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small-town, middle-class Southern life. In fact, Lee said she hoped to become the Jane Austen of South Alabama. But Lee was struggling under the weight of the public's expectations. All anyone wanted to know was when her next novel would come out and what it would be about. Lee felt pressure to write something that could live up to the success of Mockingbird, telling her cousin, I haven't anywhere to go but down.
29:57American History Tellers:In the meantime, Mockingbird continued to spark debates about race. In 1966, a school board in Richmond, Virginia, voted to ban the book from the curriculum, calling it immoral. Instantly, community members filled the op-ed pages of the local newspaper to debate the ban. One librarian was supportive, declaring, It's gratifying to know that the Hanover County School Board has taken a firm stand against slummy books. But another reader countered, To ban a book is to plant the seeds of narrow-mindedness. Eventually, the school board backtracked, and the book was allowed back onto the shelves. But it was hardly the last time Lee would encounter resistance to her book's message of racial justice.
30:41American History Tellers:In January 1966, as Nell Lee struggled to handle her success, Truman Capote finally published his book In Cold Blood. It was hailed as a major journalistic feat, the first ever non-fiction novel. The New York Times praised the immense courage it must have taken to follow the story through and write it down, and called the book reportage in a depth we have not seen before. But when Nell Lee opened her copy of the book, she was shocked by what she found. The only credit for her contributions was in the form of a dedication written to both her and Capote's romantic partner. Lee and Capote's friendship had been strained for some time.
31:19American History Tellers:Capote's cousin attested that Capote was envious of Lee's Pulitzer win, and even resented her for it. He'd also been increasingly using drugs and alcohol to numb the stress that came with his work. When Capote hosted a black-and-white masked ball at the Plaza Hotel that autumn, he chose to invite over 500 friends, but his oldest, Nell Lee, would not attend. By 1977, over a decade after the In Cold Blood snub, Harper Lee had still not given up her dream of writing another novel. And one day she opened up the newspaper and saw a story that jumped off the page. It was a strange case involving a series of murders about 100 miles from Monroeville, in Alexander City, Alabama.
32:01American History Tellers:She saw an opportunity to write her own version of In Cold Blood. So, like she had for Capote a decade before, she packed up her life and went to live in Alexander City, committed to writing a true crime novel of her own. Lee was now in her 50s, but her mind for reporting was as sharp as it had been nearly two decades before in Kansas. She collected a paper trail of records and traveled from county to county, interviewing anyone with a stake in the story. She even came up with a title for her new book, The Reverend. But when she returned to New York and sat down to write, nothing came. She struggled to structure the story and mulled over the ethical questions of covering true crime.
32:41American History Tellers:She suffered under the pressure of what she called her neck being breathed on to churn out as high-quality a book as Mockingbird. Rumors swirled about her progress, but years passed with no publication and no public statement from Lee. By Mockingbird's 30th anniversary in 1990, a newspaper reporter wrote that Lee had vanished from the literary landscape, becoming nearly as enigmatic as Boo Radley, her novel's forbidding recluse. Lee was fading away, and not just from public view. One of her key sources for The Reverend said it was his impression that Lee was fighting a battle between the book and a bottle of scotch.
33:19American History Tellers:And the scotch was winning. Her sister Alice, too, had expressed concerns about Nell's drinking habits throughout her life. Lee's personal circle was also shrinking. Her father and brother had died decades before. By the early 1980s, her editor Tay Hohoff had also passed away. In 1984, Capote died too. Despite their disagreements over In Cold Blood, it was another blow for Lee who still considered Capote a close friend. Meanwhile, Lee's masterpiece, Mockingbird, continued to soar to new heights. It was voted Best Novel of the Century by a library journal poll in 1998, and it had become a classic of American literature.
33:58American History Tellers:But the years of trying to replicate her success had come with a heavy cost.
34:09You there! Tis I, Queen Mortuana of the Night Realm, a.k.a. Kate McKinnon, and her Raven minion JoJo, a.k.a. Emily Lynn. If you do not download and binge my show,
34:22American History Tellers:Heads Will Roll, Air Apparent, on Audible, I will cut off your head! Oh no, maybe just tell them about the guest stars, like Richard Kind, Carrie Coon, Jimmy Fallon, et al. But they were in it, and if you don't listen to them, then I will cut off your tongue, then cut off your head, and then put the tongue in the head hole. Aw, you tried. Listen now exclusively on Audible and download the Audible app today or off with your head! I'm kidding.
35:02American History Tellers:In June of 2007, Harper Lee failed to show up for a lunch date with some friends in New York. Later, they found her lying on the floor in her apartment, having suffered a severe stroke. Lee recovered, but the stroke left her in a wheelchair and struggling with her vision and hearing. Lee and her sister Alice decided to move back to Monroeville for good. Lee had been splitting her time between New York and Alabama for years. Even at the height of Mockingbird's press tour, she'd been shuffling back and forth to visit her father as his health declined. Local residents might see her shopping at the Dollar General, feeding ducks by the pond, or sipping sweet tea at David's Catfish House with her sister.
35:42American History Tellers:Though Lee was known to reject interview requests with an emphatic hell no, she was friendly to her neighbors. But in Monroeville, as elsewhere, she wanted little to do with Mockingbird's fame. She used to sign copies of the book for local bookstores to sell, until she realized customers were turning around and reselling them at a huge markup. But Lee and her sister Alice had grown close to one Chicago Tribune reporter named Maria Mills. They even helped her rent a house near theirs and granted her permission to write a book about their lives. Around this time, Alice Lee had also been training a young lawyer, Tonya B.
36:18American History Tellers:Carter, to join her practice. Carter was married to Truman Capote's cousin and had grown close to the family since the sisters moved back to Alabama. But soon, Carter's increasing influence began to draw attention.
36:34American History Tellers:Imagine it's the fall of 2013. 13. You're a nurse working at an assisted living residence in Monroeville. You're finishing up your typical morning rounds, changing bedding, delivering food to residents. You stop off in the staff room for a cup of coffee when another one of the nurses approaches you with a hushed tone. Have you heard what's going on with Miss Lee? Nell Lee? Hmm, what do you mean? I've been working her rotation for years now, but recently things have been changing. How so? Well, you know Miss Lee gets so bored here. She always loves having visitors. That kind old man who owns Radley's Fountain Grill used to swing by here every Thursday to see her.
37:17Oh yeah. Didn't he always bring Miss Lee her favorite potato soup? That's right. Well, the other day I heard him in a spat with someone at the front desk. They were telling him he couldn't visit. Oh, really? What happened? Apparently, Miss Lee's now got a list of pre-approved visitors. No one else is allowed in.
37:39American History Tellers:You're shocked. You put down your coffee cup. Do you know where the list came from? Apparently, her lawyer. That woman she spends so much time with, Miss Carter. They're awfully close. I can't imagine Miss Carter would write a list without Miss Lee's permission. I know. People say she's like family to Miss Lee and her sister Alice. You lower your voice. That reminds me. I overheard some folks at the courthouse cafe gossiping the other day. Apparently, Miss Lee started suing people all around town, like the local museum. They've been selling Mockingbird merch for years, But just recently, she took them to court over it for the first time.
38:24Says it's violating her trademark. That's what I heard, too. I don't understand the sudden change.
38:32American History Tellers:You glance up at the clock. You've got to get on with your rounds before lunchtime. You put your coffee cup in the sink. I've got to go. But I will say this. My family's lived here for generations. The Lees have always been friendly. I sure hope that isn't changing. Me too. I'd hate to think Miss Lee has turned her back on the town that helped make her famous. It just isn't right. You leave the staff room unsure of what to think about all this. But as a nurse, you are determined to see that Miss Lee continues to get the best care possible.
39:12American History Tellers:In the early 2010s, Tanya Carter filed a series of lawsuits on behalf of her client, Harper Lee. There was one against Lee's literary agent. There was another against a local museum for selling unauthorized Mockingbird merchandise. Carter's firm also released a statement saying that Lee had never given the Chicago Tribune reporter, Maria Mills, permission to write about her. But the biggest surprise was yet to come. According to Carter, she'd been sorting through Lee's papers in her office one day when she'd come across a manuscript she'd never seen before. It was for a story called Go Set a Watchman.
39:49American History Tellers:The manuscript was the same one that editor Tay Ho-Ha first read back in the 1950s. Over half a century after Mockingbird was published, the newly found manuscript was presented to the publishers at HarperCollins. And in July of 2015, they put it to print, packaging it to the public as a quasi-sequel to Lee's classic novel. Goh said A Watchman featured some of the same characters readers had grown to love in Mockingbird, but deviated from Lee's beloved classic in significant ways. Instead of telling the story through the eyes of young Scout, it followed an adult version of Scout, Jean Louise, who was disillusioned with her father Atticus and the South as a whole.
40:31American History Tellers:Rather than Mockingbird's Atticus, a triumphant lawyer fighting for racial justice, Goh said a watchman featured an old and flawed man who espoused openly racist views, attended a Klan meeting, and opposed the Supreme Court's ruling on desegregation. If Mockingbird's lesson had been that all people, regardless of race, were worthy of respect, watchmen seemed to say that not everyone believed in that ideal of equality. In the time since Mockingbird's first publication, it had become part of the American literary canon, but also the subject of increasing criticism. Many modern readers recoiled at its use of racial slurs.
41:08American History Tellers:Some argued the book lacked three-dimensional black characters and that its portrayal of racism was simplistic and lacking nuance. Others argued that it was a paternalistic narrative of a great white lawyer trying to save a black man and that it reduced racism to an individual-level problem rather than a systemic one. With Watchman's publication, these questions roared to the forefront of literary conversation. As a New York Times reviewer reflected, One of the emotional through lines in both Mockingbird and Watchman is a plea for empathy. The difference is that Mockingbird suggested that we should have compassion for outsiders like Boo and Tom Robinson, while Watchman asks us to have understanding for a bigot named Atticus.
41:50American History Tellers:What's more, some said Lee may not have wanted this unedited draft released to the world. Herman Roville neighbor said she hadn't been well since her stroke, and some questioned whether she had been in sound enough mental condition to sign off on publication. But others close to Lee said she was happy that the original draft was out in the world and that she'd finally published that elusive second book.
42:16American History Tellers:One year after Ghost Said a Watchman's publication, in February of 2016, Nell Harper Lee died in her bed at her assisted living home in Monroeville. A statement released by her publisher said she lived her life the way she wanted to, in private, surrounded by books and the people who loved her. But her death left fans with a perplexing challenge. How to sift through the last 50 years of Lee's life when she seemed to retreat from the boldness of the book that defined her career. In many ways, Harper Lee was full of contradictions. A loner from Alabama who spent much of her life in the big city.
42:51American History Tellers:An acclaimed author who hardly ever published. A polite Southern woman who wasn't afraid to confront racial injustice. A giant of American literature who struggled for years to find her voice. and then at the height of her success, fell silent. From Wondery, this is the sixth episode of Great American Authors for American History Tellers. In our next series, in 1900, a massive storm began churning through the Gulf of Mexico, headed toward Galveston, Texas. But officials in Washington dismissed urgent warnings from Cuban forecasters who insisted it would become a deadly hurricane. So as the prosperous island city carried on unaware, its leaders were left with a fateful choice.
43:32American History Tellers:Sound the alarm and risk panic, or trust the official forecasts and hope the storm would turn.
44:02American History Tellers:Sound design by Derek Behrens. Music by Lindsey Graham. Voice acting by Joe Hernandez-Kolsky and Cat Peoples. This episode is written by Julia Press. Edited by Dorian Marina. Produced by Alita Rosansky. Our production coordinator is Desi Blaylock. Managing producer, Matt Gant. Senior producer, Andy Herman. And executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman and Marsha Louis for Wondery.
44:48American History Tellers:Wondering.
From the publisher
In 1949, aspiring writer Nelle Harper Lee moved from her home in small-town Alabama to New York City. She was following in the footsteps of her childhood friend, author Truman Capote. Within a few years she had penned a novel of her own, and called it To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird catapulted Harper Lee to the heights of literary fame. But just as she found success, she withdrew, overwhelmed by being in the public eye, and the pressure to produce another book as good as her first. Decades would pass before anyone mentioned the possibility of her publishing again - and this time, people wondered how much of a voice she really had in the publication of her second book.
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