Harper Lee Signed Early Photo Very Fine

LEE, HARPER. Photograph Signed, “Harper Lee”, in felt tip at the bottom left corner, 8” x 10”, no place, no date. Black and white, satin finish, Very Fine condition. Includes RR Auction Certificate of Authenticity.

Nelle Harper Lee (1926-2016) was born in the Alabama town of Monroeville, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a relative of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, was a lawyer who served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote, to whom she remained friends with into adulthood.

After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50). While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of a campus magazine. Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950. Lee worked as an airline reservation clerk until the late 1950s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father.

Lee is best known for her 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, which won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Lee has received numerous accolades and honorary degrees, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, awarded for her contribution to literature. 

The plot and characters of “To Kill a Mockingbird” are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936 when she was 10. The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children, inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown of Monroeville.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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