Why Harper Lee didn't write again after "To Kill a Mockingbird".

[Coach Hank Crisp]

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"To Kill A Mockingbird" is off-limits for most who talk to its author Harper Lee,
but not to her close friend, the Rev. Thomas Lane Butts of the Monroeville Methodist
Church.

"We talk about it once in a while,'' he tells Paul Toohey of Australia's Sunday Telegraph.

"She once said to me when we were up late one night, sharing a bottle of scotch:

 'You ever wonder why I never wrote anything else?'

"Two reasons: one, I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through
with To Kill A Mockingbird for any amount of money."

"Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again'. ''

Very, very rare to read or hear anything about Harper Lee. Lee lives in Monroeville
Alabama  with sister in sheltered housing. She declines interviews by sending
hand signed written notes .

I read several years back that "To Kill a Mockingbird" still sells 2-3 million
copies per year. I know I bought the book twice for my children in high school.

Over ten years ago Pat Dye was on PF. Dye sounded like he may have had a few.
Dye told Paul that he had visited Harper Lee in Monroeville. Dye said he took a
copy of the book "To Kill A Blackbird" for her to sign and that A'burn was going to
 auction off the signed copy.


 

[ssmith general]

I found this interesting, thank you.

[Coach Hank Crisp]

I found this interesting, thank you.

It Is very interesting. It's Alabama history. Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville with her friend Truman Capote. Harper Lee went to UA from 1945-1949. She was editor of the humor school paper  Rammer Jammer. In 1949 she went to England and studied a year at Oxford.

 

[Old Tider]

And Margaret Mitchell only wrote one book, Gone With the Wind. How could she have topped it?

[Coach Hank Crisp]

And Margaret Mitchell only wrote one book, Gone With the Wind. How could she have topped it?

There was book named Scarlett that came out in early 1990's. I don't think that Margaret Mitchell wrote it.

 

[Old Tider]

And Margaret Mitchell only wrote one book, Gone With the Wind. How could she have topped it?

There was book named Scarlett that came out in early 1990's. I don't think that Margaret Mitchell wrote it.

 

Good point, Coach. Margaret Mitchell was killed in 1949, hit by a car in Atlanta. She left two requests, that there would never be a sequel and that her house would not be turned into a museum. Her estate ignored both requests. Scarlett was really panned by critics for its soap-opera plot. Rhett Butler's People came out a few years ago. The best sequel title was The Wind Done Gone written from the perspective of the slaves.

[Kupkake]

Margaret Mitchell actually wrote a book before she wrote "Gone with the Wind". 

In the 1990s, a manuscript by Mitchell of a novel entitled Lost Laysen was discovered among a collection of letters Mitchell had given in the early 1920s to a suitor named Henry Love Angel. The manuscript had been written in two notebooks in 1916. In the 1990s, Angel's son discovered the manuscript and sent it to the Road to Tara Museum, which authenticated the work. A special edition of Lost Laysen — a romance set in the South Pacific — was edited by Debra Freer, augmented with an account of Mitchell and Angel's romance including a number of her letters to him, and published by the Scribner imprint of Simon & Schuster in 1996.

[rueben]

 

 I find this thread quite fascinating. Please continue.

[Kupkake]

 

 I find this thread quite fascinating. Please continue.

I'd like to hear more too.  I went to college in Atlanta and worked there my entire Federal career.  Before our office moved to the center of town it was located at the corner of Peachtree and 7th. Street.  All the lunch places were further up Peachtree and so I walked by Margaret Mitchell's house almost every day.  It didn't look nearly this nice at the time.  As mid-town Atlanta became fashionable all the area was improved and while being really nice now is an area of major congestion!

Here is a link that shows her home, which was actually an apartment in a building of apartments: http://www.margaretmitchellhouse.com/

I read Gone with the Wind when I was 11 years old and was always fascinated by Margaret Mitchell.  Obviously Atlanta was too.  I seen the movie too many times to count.  When I read about her I know all the streets, buildings, etc. and the cemetery where she is buried.  As you see, I still find her a fascinating topic!

[Old Tider]

Me too, Kupkake. I grew up in Jonesboro, the location of the plantation house that Mitchell supposedly used as a model for Tara. We kids used to hunt for Indian arrowheads in a nearby field and were disappointed to find just minie balls left from the Civil War battle. Wished I had more sense back then.

[SUPERCOACH]

 

 I find this thread quite fascinating. Please continue.

I'd like to hear more too.  I went to college in Atlanta and worked there my entire Federal career.  Before our office moved to the center of town it was located at the corner of Peachtree and 7th. Street.  All the lunch places were further up Peachtree and so I walked by Margaret Mitchell's house almost every day.  It didn't look nearly this nice at the time.  As mid-town Atlanta became fashionable all the area was improved and while being really nice now is an area of major congestion!

Here is a link that shows her home, which was actually an apartment in a building of apartments: http://www.margaretmitchellhouse.com/

I read Gone with the Wind when I was 11 years old and was always fascinated by Margaret Mitchell.  Obviously Atlanta was too.  I seen the movie too many times to count.  When I read about her I know all the streets, buildings, etc. and the cemetery where she is buried.  As you see, I still find her a fascinating topic!

Unbelievable!  I worked in mid town for a little while, and I used to walk down to a little sports bar restaurant on the corner of 10th and Peachtree for lunch almost every day.  I was less than a block away from that house and never even knew anything about it.

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