50 Fun Facts About Harper Lee

Who narrates To Kill a Mockingbird?

Scout narrates as a grown woman looking back on herself from age six, blending a child's view with adult hindsight.

Which Mockingbird character is falsely accused of rape?

Tom Robinson is convicted by an all-white jury despite the evidence, then shot dead while trying to escape from prison.

Which award did Lee's novel win in 1961?

Lee won the Pulitzer Prize with her debut novel, then published no other novel until 2015.

What was Lee's hometown?

Monroeville loosely inspired the novel's fictional town, though Lee denied that the book was autobiographical.

What was Lee's actual first name?

Nelle was her grandmother Ellen's name spelled backwards; she dropped it from the book so readers wouldn't say Nellie.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, what does the children's father shoot in the street?

A rabid dog, and the children learn to their surprise that their father was once known as One-Shot Finch.

Which future Oscar winner first appeared on the big screen as Boo Radley in the 1962 To Kill a Mockingbird?

Robert Duvall's screen time was brief, but his recluse is the man who finally rescues the children from their attacker.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, why is it called a sin to kill a mockingbird?

It only sings, harming no one, neighbour Miss Maudie explains, so the bird comes to stand for innocence in the novel.

What happened to the two black clients Lee's father once defended on murder charges?

Both were hanged, and that failed defence reportedly helped inspire the doomed trial at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Which writer adapted To Kill a Mockingbird into the 2018 Broadway play starring Jeff Daniels?

Aaron Sorkin's script drew a 2018 lawsuit from Lee's estate, which said his version of the hero strayed from the book; the play still opened that December.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, where does the reclusive neighbour leave small gifts for the children?

In a tree: the feared recluse, Boo Radley, turns out to be the man who saves the children from Bob Ewell's attack.

Which To Kill a Mockingbird character was based on Lee's childhood friend next door?

Dill Harris was Lee's portrait of Truman Capote, returning the favour after he wrote her into his first novel as the tomboy Idabel.

Which Capote book did Lee help research in Holcomb, Kansas?

In Cold Blood began as what Capote and Lee thought would be a magazine article on a small Kansas town's response to a family's murder.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, how does the sheriff say Bob Ewell died?

He fell on his own knife, the sheriff insists, to spare the shy recluse who really killed Ewell while saving the children.

What was Rammer Jammer, which Lee edited at the University of Alabama?

A humour magazine: Lee rose to become its editor, yet she left the university without finishing her degree.

At which English university did Lee attend a 1948 summer school?

Oxford's summer school came as she was losing interest in law, and soon after returning home she dropped out to become a writer.

What jobs did Lee take after moving to New York in 1949?

Bookstore, then airline reservations work paid the bills by day, leaving her nights free for writing.

What Christmas gift from friends in 1956 let Lee write full-time?

A year's wages came from friends Michael and Joy Brown, who'd had a good year and wanted to give her a full, fair chance to write.

Who was Lee's editor at Lippincott who guided To Kill a Mockingbird through its drafts?

Tay Hohoff led Lee through two years of rewrites, turning a draft she saw as 'a series of anecdotes' into a finished novel.

What was the title of the manuscript Lee first delivered to her agent in 1957?

Go Set a Watchman was reworked into To Kill a Mockingbird, then surfaced in 2015, sold as a new novel though it was an early draft.

Biographer Charles Shields says Lee once did what with her manuscript in frustration?

She threw it out the window into the snow, then called her editor in tears and was told to march outside and pick up the pages.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, what breaks up the lynch mob?

A child's small talk: the narrator chats with a mob leader about his son, her classmate, until the men give up and leave.

About how many copies of To Kill a Mockingbird have been sold worldwide?

About 40 million copies have sold, yet local school boards have often tried to ban it.

Which 1931 Alabama trial does the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird parallel?

The Scottsboro Boys case saw nine black youths tried for allegedly raping two white women, yet Lee's novel was not based directly on it.

Who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1962 film of To Kill a Mockingbird?

Horton Foote's script won the Oscar, and Lee visited the set during filming and supported the project.

Who won the Best Actor Oscar for the 1962 film of To Kill a Mockingbird?

Gregory Peck's role as the lawyer father also won him the lifelong friendship of the famously private Lee.

In which fictional Alabama town is To Kill a Mockingbird set?

Maycomb is set in the Depression-era 1930s, and Lee's 2015 novel brings the heroine back there as a grown woman two decades later.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, what does the narrator dress up as for the school pageant?

A ham, and she's still stuck inside the wire costume when Bob Ewell attacks, unable to see what is happening.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, what addiction does the cranky neighbour Mrs. Dubose fight before she dies?

Morphine: she breaks the habit knowing she is dying, which the children's father calls real courage, beginning when you know you're licked.

Lee's unfinished book The Reverend was reportedly what kind of work?

A true-crime account of an Alabama preacher suspected of killing five people, who was himself later killed.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, what is really in the paper bag Dolphus Raymond drinks from?

Coca-Cola: he fakes being a drunk so the town has an excuse for why he chooses to live among black people.

When a Virginia school board branded To Kill a Mockingbird 'immoral' in 1966, what did a Richmond editor do?

Gave away free copies: James J. Kilpatrick offered the book to children who wrote in and handed out 81 by the end of the first week.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, why does the narrator's new first-grade teacher scold her?

She can already read, so the teacher tells her to have her father stop teaching her at home.

Which US president awarded Harper Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

George W. Bush gave it to her at the White House in 2007, a rare public appearance for the famously reclusive author.

When Jem's pants snag on the Radley fence in To Kill a Mockingbird, how does he find them later?

Mended and folded, though Jem had lost them fleeing a shotgun blast from the Radley house.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, what injury does Jem suffer when Bob Ewell attacks the children?

A broken arm, suffered before the feared recluse Boo Radley came to the children's rescue.

Lee's 2006 letter about her love of books was published where?

O, The Oprah Magazine got the letter, a rare piece from an author who had quit giving interviews some four decades earlier.

In 2013, Lee sued her literary agent to regain what?

She said she had been duped into signing over the novel's copyright in 2007, while her hearing and eyesight were failing; the case settled that September.

In 2013, Lee sued her hometown's museum for selling what without her permission?

Souvenirs such as Mockingbird T-shirts were at issue, and the suit said the museum was cashing in on the novel's fame.

Who was credited with finding Harper Lee's long-lost manuscript in her safe-deposit box?

Her lawyer Tonja Carter said she found it in 2014, but reporters said it had first surfaced at a 2011 meeting she attended, fuelling doubts.

At the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, what does the defence reveal about Mayella's father?

He is left-handed, and Mayella's injuries were on the right side of her face, pointing to a left-handed attacker.

In Lee's 2015 novel, what shocks the grown-up heroine when she returns home to Alabama?

Her father's racist views: the novel was an early draft, and reworking it gave readers the heroic father of To Kill a Mockingbird instead.

What did an Alabama state investigation in 2015 look into regarding Lee?

Whether she could consent to the new book was probed after an elder-abuse complaint, and investigators found the claims of coercion unfounded.

What did three Polish academics use to test who wrote Lee's two novels?

Stylometry, which counts an author's word patterns, showed one writer produced both books, though it hinted Capote may have helped with Mockingbird's opening.

Which group voted To Kill a Mockingbird the best novel of the 20th century in a 1999 poll?

Librarians, polled by Library Journal, gave it the title, although some early critics had faulted the novel for sermonizing.

Which actress earned an Oscar nomination for playing Lee in the film Capote?

Catherine Keener was nominated for Capote, and a rival film on the same story, Infamous, was held back a year to avoid dueling Capotes.

Lee entered assisted living after what 2007 event?

A stroke ended decades of splitting her time between New York and her Alabama hometown, and she stayed in assisted living until her death in 2016.

During Miss Maudie's house fire in To Kill a Mockingbird, what does someone secretly wrap around the narrator?

A blanket, and the children's father realises the shy recluse Boo Radley must have put it there while she watched the fire.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, where do the children sit to watch the trial?

In the balcony: with no seats left downstairs, they watch from among the town's black spectators.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, where does Calpurnia take the children?

To her church, where the children are surprised to hear her speak differently among her congregation, glimpsing a life they never knew.