In fact, the public encouragement, both critical and commercial, would have been daunting to the most seasoned and confident of novelists. There was the Pulitzer Prize, for one, as well as the fact that the sales figures for every edition of the book could not be measured in fewer than seven figures. By 1964 an estimated five million had sold through the Popular Library; two million had been distributed by Reader’s Digest; another one million copies of a volume in which Mockingbird had been included with other books in an “all-time best” collection had sold. The Book of the Month and Literary Guild Book clubs had run out of books. Mockingbird was selling actively all over the world: Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. Six hardbound editions had been published in German. An Italian edition was selling handsomely, and the book was published as well in Hungary, Romania, and Greece.
Yet the money that came with this success, rather than freeing Lee to pursue her creative instincts, turned out to be another source of anxiety. Incredible sums dropped into her life like rain through a leaky roof. Her sister Alice was responsible for funneling it all where it needed to go. The two sisters fretted over the tax implications of Nelle’s constant stream of income, reflecting their father’s old irritability over taxes and the prospect of profligate government. “The Procurator of Judea is breathing heavily down my neck,” Nelle wrote to Hal Caufield in December 1960. “[A]ll the lovely, lovely money is going straight to the Bureau of Internal Revenue tomorrow, why during the Christmas season I shall never know. It has left me totally devoid of anything resembling good thoughts toward my brethren, especially when my brethren drive around Washington in Cadillacs I’ve paid for.” In October 1963, Williams passed on to Alice a royalty check from Universal Pictures for over fifty-eight thousand dollars (this was minus the agent’s commission; the full check was for over a half million dollars in today’s money), and warned that there might be another one before the end of the year. Alice and Nelle tried not to worry. They were just hoping to take things in stride, Alice wrote. “Nelle Harper nearly flipped when I did a running total of her income for 1963, and she worried terribly for a short while, then she took off to the golf course and had a good time.” The following August, Williams sheepishly sent along yet another check from Universal. “We know that Nelle Harper wishes these checks would not come in every few months,” she wrote, “but I’m sure we all understand that there’s no way of stopping them.”
Nelle’s complaints about the tax man recalled the contrarian, cantankerous young woman of her college days. Her crankiness was on display in the interview she gave to Roy Newquist in March 1964. Summarizing her educational background, she spoke of having resisted “all efforts of the government to educate me.” How had she adjusted to living in New York? Newquist asked. She didn’t live in New York, she said; she was there only two months a year. Thus began the hopeless tradition of reporters trying to pin down where she was and when—New York or Monroeville—and what clues her location held about her loyalties, sensibilities, and work habits. What advice would she give to young writers? Newquist wondered. “Young people today, especially the college kids, scare me to death,” she said, sounding about a quarter-century older than her actual age, which was thirty-eight. To writers foolish enough to think they could learn how to write in school, she offered: “Well, my dear young people, writing is something that is within you, and if it isn’t there, nothing can put it there.” Indulging her Anglophilia, she recommended to struggling writers the advice given by the Reverend John Keble, the priest and poet whose book The Christian Year (1827) was the most popular volume of verse in nineteenth-century England. To a friend who had asked Keble how to get his faith back, the reverend responded, “By holy living.” Perhaps Nelle felt a kinship with Keble as a fellow best-selling author of a book of moral instruction. She spoke of the writer’s life being akin to the “medieval priesthood.” Writing was “the one form of art and endeavor that you cannot do for an audience,” she said. Whatever else one can say about Harper Lee over her remaining fifty-two years, she followed her own advice. She never sat for another interview, or finished another book, for the rest of her life.
Acknowledgments
Many people have helped me in the researching and writing of this book. Edwin Conner, Molly Lee, and Hank Conner shared their memories of their grandfather and their aunt, and have answered questions, large and small, along the way. Ed very generously read the entire manuscript and offered suggestions and corrections. Jonathan Burnham at HarperCollins was extraordinarily generous in sharing documents that made clear important details about what Harper Lee was writing and when in the late 1950s. He also went to great lengths to ensure that I would be able to quote from the bulk of those documents. Paul Kennerson went out of his way to allow me to read and quote from his private collection of Harper Lee letters. Steve Stewart, a former editor of the Monroe Journal and the son of the man who bought the paper from A. C. Lee, answered many questions about Monroeville and the newspaper business in Alabama. In Monroeville, Wanda Green and the entire staff at the Monroe County Museum helped with a variety of research questions. Charles Shields generously shared research materials with me, and answered questions about sources.
Several colleagues read the entire manuscript on a very quick turnaround, and offered suggestions that improved the book enormously. Thank you Samuel Freedman, Patrick Allitt, Benjamin Reiss, Danny LaChance, and David Payne. Hank Klibanoff helped me with important questions about both Alabama and journalism, and opened his expansive Rolodex for me on a number of occasions. Sameer Pandya, Farrell Evans, Bruce Schulman, and Jim Campbell have been great sounding boards about this project as it evolved over many years.
Erica Bruchko at the Woodruff Library at Emory helped me locate sources and used money from her budget to buy microfilm copies of the Monroe Journal, which expedited my research greatly. It would have been impossible to write this book without the help of the entire staff at the Interlibrary Loan Office at Emory. They do fantastic work.
I wrote the bulk of this book during a year I spent as a senior fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory. Martine Brownley, Keith Anthony, Amy Erbil, and Colette Barlow all helped make my year there productive and fun. Thanks as well to the other senior fellows: Robin Fivush, Noelle McAfee, and especially Sarah McPhee, with whom I had a number of important conversations about history and biography.
Thanks to Sue Williams for inviting me to participate in a panel discussion at Emory with Natasha Trethewey and Kevin Young on the intersections of history and poetry. Natasha’s and Kevin’s writings have been an inspiration to me for many years, and our discussion that day sharpened my ideas and approach to this book.
Julian Zelizer and Kevin Kruse invited me to present a chapter of this book at their Political History seminar at Princeton. Sean Wilentz’s commentary on the paper was brilliant and challenging, and the entire conversation with students and faculty there was inspiring.
I was fortunate to have two very smart and able Emory undergraduates who served as research assistants for the book, Mary Hollis McGreevy, who helped with some of the early research, and Hannah Fuller, who did yeoman’s work checking the notes. I also benefitted from comments on the manuscript from the Emory undergraduates in my seminar on Atticus Finch and American History in the fall of 2017. Colleagues at Emory such as Tom Rogers, Yanna Yannakakis, Jeff Lesser, Jamie Melton, and Jonathan Prude provided insight and encouragement. The entire staff in the History Department—Kelly Yates, Becky Herring, Katie Wilson, and Alison Rollins—are a joy to work with. Their efficiency and professionalism make it easier to do things like researching and writing this book. Also making it easier are friends who lend their intelligent, balanced perspective—so thank you Randy, Charles, James, Walter, Berkeley, Bruce, Terry, and the entire Horseshoe gang.
My agent, Geri Thoma, is a sage and experienced guide and advocate. I appreciate her expertise and her friendship. Thank you Lara Heimert, publisher at Basic Books, for taking on this u
northodox project. Thanks can’t begin to cover all that my editor, Dan Gerstle, did to help with the book. That guy doesn’t miss a lick, and I’m grateful for his support and enthusiasm from the earliest stages on through to the last edit.
My daughter, Carrie, my son, Sam, and my wife, Caroline Herring, have lived this project with me over the last couple of years. Caroline also gave the book one of its best reads, and saved me from some foolish mistakes. Editorial assistance, however, has been among the least of her contributions. I’m a lucky man.
JOSEPH CRESPINO IS the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University. He is the author of Strom Thurmond’s America and In Search of Another Country, winner of the 2008 Lillian Smith Book Award from the Southern Regional Council. He lives in Decatur, Georgia.
Also by Joseph Crespino:
Strom Thurmond’s America
The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (co-editor)
In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution
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