Posthumous baggage. Harper Lee’s letters

Abstract

The article is devoted to the epistolary legacy of Nelle Harper Lee, the author of the American cult classic To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). The researcher examines a collection of Nelle’s letters written from 1956 to 2009, provides a detailed list of sources and makes suggestions about the potential new discoveries that could shed light on the life of ‘America’s most reclusive author.’ This short study of ‘posthumous baggage,’ as Lee referred to her private correspondence, offers an insight into the interests of the author, who insisted on keeping her personal life to herself. The letters included in the study concern the writer’s relationship to her father Amasa Coleman Lee, on whom she based the character of Atticus Finch, her attitude to her own biography published by Charles Shields, and personal anxieties of her final years. The author also details Lee’s opinions of literature, from the 19th-c. classics to contemporary authors, and shows how much she valued communication with her numerous fans.