Harper Lee’s newly discovered tales present her ‘genius’, say her household

Molly Lee is speaking to me in regards to the tales her aunt Nelle, recognized to the world as Harper Lee, would weave for her when she was a bit of lady. “She was just a great storyteller,” says the 77-year-old from her residence in Alabama.

That’s an understatement if the success of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-prize profitable novel To Kill A Mockingbird is something to go by. Since its publication in 1960, when it was an immediate hit, the e-book has bought greater than 42 million copies worldwide

Based across the story of Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape, it is instructed by way of the eyes of two white kids, Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch and her brother Jem – and is usually described as an American basic.

But on the level Molly is describing, earlier than the world had heard of Lee, she was merely an aunt enchanting her niece with tales, usually by riffing on one among her favorite authors, the British novelist Daphne Du Maurier.

“The stories that she told me, she would make them up but they all seemed to be based around, ‘It was a dark and stormy night’… It seemed to me they were always on the moor and she would just take me into the dark,” Molly says.

Molly’s cousin is 77-year-old Ed Lee Conner. His earliest reminiscences of his aunt date again to the late Forties, when he was tiny. “She sang to me in a way that was very funny,” he remembers. “And I laughed.”

He offers me a rendition, half-singing I’ve Got a Little List from the musical The Mikado. Ed says he solely realised a lot later that “she was singing to me songs from Gilbert and Sullivan”, the Victorian-era duo Lee “adored” all her life.

It appears a few of Lee’s influences have been British, even when her roots have been in Monroeville, Alabama at a time of strict segregation, when faculties, church buildings and eating places have been divided on race traces.

The cousins are sharing their reminiscences of their aunt – who died in 2016 – on the eve of the publication of a brand new e-book, The Land of Sweet Forever.

It’s a collection of newly found brief tales Lee wrote within the years earlier than Mockingbird, in addition to beforehand printed essays and journal items.

Ed explains: “I knew there were unpublished stories, I had no idea where the manuscripts of those stories were.”

They have been found in one among his aunt’s New York City flats after she died, a time capsule from the beginning of Lee’s profession which assist clarify how a younger lady from Alabama turned a best-selling creator whose work addressed the turbulent problems with her age.

Molly is “very pleased” that the tales have been discovered. “I think it’s interesting to see how her writing evolved and how she worked on her craft,” she says. “Even I can tell how she improved.”

Some components will probably be acquainted to followers of To Kill A Mockingbird.

Versions of Jean Louise Finch seem, though she hasn’t gained her nickname Scout but.

In one of many tales, The Pinking Shears, the character is a spirited little lady known as Jean Louie who offers a buddy a haircut and faces the wrath of the kid’s father. Perhaps a touch of the forthright Scout to come back?

In one other, The Binoculars, a baby beginning faculty is berated by the instructor for already understanding the right way to learn. A model of that story seems early on in Mockingbird.

Some of them are set in Maycomb, Alabama, the fictional city which additionally stands for Monroeville in To Kill A Mockingbird.

Ed, who’s a retired English professor, calls them “apprentice stories” which are not “the fullest expression of her genius and yet there’s genius in them”.

“She was a brilliant writer in the making and you see something of her brilliance in these stories.”

I discovered one, The Cat’s Meow, an unsettling learn by way of a contemporary lens. Set in Maycomb, it sees two siblings, clearly Lee and her older sister Alice, confounded by her sister’s black gardener Arthur, who’s from the North however has apparently determined to work within the segregationist South. The older sister tells the youthful one he is a “Yankee” who has “as much education as you have”.

Written in 1957, seven years earlier than the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lee’s personal method to the civil rights motion seems to be evolving.

Some of the language within the story and at instances, even the narrator’s personal attitudes, are uncomfortable to learn.

Ed thinks that is a “fair assessment”

He factors to Go Set A Watchman, the novel Lee printed only a 12 months earlier than she died after the manuscript was discovered many years after she wrote it.

As liberal because the narrator thinks she is, “she’s not entirely liberated from her own prejudices, let’s put it that way”, Ed says.

“And I don’t say that in any demeaning sense because for white southerners, it’s not easy to rid ourselves of all the prejudices that we have born over the centuries.”

The publication of Go Set A Watchman sparked controversy. Atticus Finch, the anti-racist hero of To Kill A Mockingbird, is portrayed as a racist.

There have been questions on whether or not Lee, who had important well being points by then, had the capability to present full consent. (An investigation by the state of Alabama discovered claims of elder abuse have been unfounded).

I ask whether or not it is an invasion of Lee’s privateness to publish posthumously these tales that Lee did not select to make public in her lifetime. Ed Lee Conner is obvious that, relating to The Land of Sweet Forever, “that’s an easy judgment to make, she attempted to publish all these stories”.

And he believes – like Mockingbird – the tales have one thing to say about trendy race relations within the US which is “part of the continuing relevance of what she wrote”.

To Kill A Mockingbird “had a huge influence on the way a lot of people thought about race relations in the United States”.

Writing a e-book a few black man’s wrestle that is centred on white characters, notably Atticus Finch, the white lawyer performed by Gregory Peck within the 1962 movie, has led, in later years, to accusations of white saviourism.

Ed tells me his aunt “was writing a novel primarily for a white audience who I think would need to see a figure like Atticus Finch much more clearly and much more humanly in their lives, even as a fictional character, in order to influence them as much as she could”.

In an interview in 1964 for the New York radio station WQXR, Harper Lee described the “sheer numbness” she felt on the response to her debut novel.

“I never expected that the book would sell in the first place,” she mentioned. “I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers. I was hoping that maybe somebody might like it well enough to give me some encouragement about it.”

Ed’s facet of the household had been given it in proof, forward of publication. At age 13, he learn the entire e-book in two days. “I was absolutely enthralled and it was one of the highlights of my youth.”

He says the entire household shared her emotions of numbness at its reception. “We all loved it and thought it was a terrific novel, but we had no idea… that it would go on to be as phenomenal a success as it was.”

Harper Lee had taken care of Molly and her brother whereas she was writing it. “She was in her bedroom typing away and she locked the door and she’d come out and play with us and then go back to typing.”

When Molly learn the e-book, as a 12-year-old, “I’m not sure that I ever looked up from it. I was totally engrossed.”

I play them a part of the WQXR interview that their aunt did 4 years after the e-book got here out. It’s the one recognized recording of Harper Lee speaking about To Kill A Mockingbird.

She retired from public life quickly afterwards. Ed says she wasn’t a recluse as some have urged and was very sociable with the folks she knew. She’d merely realised, after the novel’s success after which the vastly widespread movie, that she did not must put it up for sale anymore.

“She did not particularly enjoy public appearances,” he remembers. “She had no interest whatsoever in being a celebrity. So there was a point at which she decided no more interviews.”

Listening to her talking on this treasured recording is its personal time capsule.

In her smooth southern accent, melodic and lilting, she talks not nearly being numbed on the response to the e-book, but in addition why she believes the southern states are “a region of storytellers” and the way she needs to be “a Jane Austen of South Alabama”.

Hearing her voice once more “just makes me smile,” Molly says.

“I love hearing it,” agrees Ed, clearly moved. “It’s wonderful.”

The Land of Sweet Forever by Harper Lee is printed on 21 October 2025.