Mockingbird (57 page)

Wood, George

World War II

WQXR (radio station)

Yale University

Yarbrough, James

Zanuck, Darryl F.

Nelle Harper Lee's street in Monroeville, Alabama, when she was a child. Her house was about where the car is parked.

A. C. Lee, the model for Atticus Finch: civic leader, politician, and title lawyer in the late 1930s.

Frances Cunningham Lee: a sensitive woman whose “nervous disorder” bewildered her youngest child, Nelle.

Edwin Coleman Lee, Harper Lee's brother and the model for Jem in
To Kill a Mockingbird. (Auburn University, 1940)

The sophomore class of Monroe County High School. Nelle (second row from top, farthest right) adored her English teacher, Gladys Watson (top row, center).

Nelle (far right) poses stiffly with two classmates at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, on a Sunday afternoon during her freshman year.

A happier Nelle (second from left) found her niche at the University of Alabama writing for campus publications. Here she appears in the 1948 yearbook as a “Campus Personality.”

A snapshot of Nelle in downtown Garden City, Kansas, during the winter of 1959–60.
(Garden City Telegram)

“Just plain handsome” is how Detective Alvin Dewey impressed Nelle the first time she met him while accompanying Truman Capote as his “assistant researchist” during the Clutter murders investigation in Kansas.
(AP Photo)

An index card from the files of Harper Lee's agent indicating the retitling of
Go Set a Watchman
to
To Kill a Mockingbird
as Tay Hohoff edited the manuscript.
(Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University)

Tay Hohoff “was a terrific editor,” said one of her authors. “She would ask you questions. She would go through the manuscript and jot down little questions in the margins. From those questions, you would start questioning your own work.” Only with the release of
Go Set a Watchman
has the extent of Hohoff's role in shaping
To Kill a Mockingbird
been appreciated.
(Therese Nunn Perry)

Lee and producer Alan Pakula watch the filming of
To Kill a Mockingbird
in 1962. Nelle endured a punishing promotional tour after the film's release, using her teasing wit to charm reporters.
(AP Photo)