Pulitzer Prize winner and "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee smiles before receiving the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House Nov. 5, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Lee will publish her second novel this summer.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
It is Harper Lee’s birthday today! The renowned Pulitzer prize-winning author would have turned 91 Friday, April 28.
Lee is better remembered for "To Kill A Mockingbird," the classic 1960 novel that questioned racism confronted racism. The novel is still taught in classrooms across the U.S. Lee died at the age of 89 last February in her hometown of Monroeville, Pennsylvania.
Lee’s parents named her Nelle Harper Lee after her maternal grandmother Ellen — Nelle is Ellen spelled backwards. Lee was called “Nelle Harper” by family and “Nelle” by friends. However, she decided to drop “Nelle” from her name and go only with “Harper Lee” as her author’s name because she did not want people to mispronounce her name as “Nellie.” Nelle rhymes with bell.
In the mid-1970s, she probed a series of murders by a popular “voodoo priest” the Rev. Willie Maxwell in Alexander. Maxwell claimed he was “the seventh son of a seventh son” and people reportedly died wherever he went. After Maxwell’s violent death, Lee researched in reportedly planned to write a book about the case. However, book never came to being.
Lee liked Gregory Peck, who played the role of Atticus Finch in the 1962 movie version of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” according to journalist Michael Freedland, who interviewed the novelist in 1978. He wrote in the Guardian: “Plainly, it seemed they loved each other — but like a daughter loves a parent. They were only 10 years apart in age, and yet it seemed to me that he was a sort of surrogate father, even when her own father, on whom Peck’s role as Atticus Finch was based, was still alive.”
Prior to the 1963 Academy Awards, when Peck was nominated for Best Actor, Lee sent Peck father’s prized pocket watch, which was engraved with “To Gregory from Harper.” Peck and Lee were friends until he passed away in 2003.
But, initially, Lee wanted Spencer Tracy to portray Atticus Finch the movie and she sent a letter asking him to take the role. However, Tracy, but through his agent, said he was tied up with another film and could not take up the role.
Lee was widely reported to be a recluse and preferred to live a quiet life. Her last major interview was in 1964. However, she did was not bothered about being around people. In New York City, she would reportedly visit museums, the theater and go to baseball games. In Alabama, she ate out — David's Catfish House being her favorite; she joined friends for fishing and attended an exercise class held at Monroeville's Community House.
Lee’s favorite activities in Monroeville were fishing, feeding ducks and geese at a local pond, and drinking coffee at McDonald’s.
Lee’s favorite authors were William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Jane Austen, and Thomas Macaulay. In a 1964 radio interview, she said, “All I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama.”
