An archive of six typed letters (print & pen and ink on paper)

An archive of six typed letters signed in type ("Nelle," "N.H.") or with comic pseudonyms ("The Prisoner of Zenda," "Francesca da Rimini," "R. Bouverie Pusey," and one signed in holograph, "Manning") to Harold Caufield, et al. New York architect Harold Caufield was part of the small circle of friends that included Michael and Joy Brown, who funded Lee"s expenses for a year in New York as she wrote Mockingbird. She inscribes the 35th Anniversary edition to him, using "Nelle Harper," reserved for close friends only. The first four letters date from before the publication of Mockingbird, as Lee is back in Monroeville, caring for her ailing father, the model for Atticus Finch. In one dated "Sunday," she writes: "Daddy is sitting beside me at the kitchen table"I found myself staring at his handsome old face, and a sudden wave of panic flashed through me, which I think was an echo of the fear and desolation that filled me when he was nearly dead. It has been years since I have lived with him on a day-to-day basis"" In a "Sunday" letter from ca. 1956 she expresses her "longing to get back [to New York], for so many reasons"I simply can"t work here. Genius overcomes all obstacles, etc., and this is no excuse, but I think the record will show the extent of my output at 1539 York [Ave.]"" Five months of the "ecclesiastical gloom of Monroeville at present is really too much. Sitting & listening to people you went to school with is excruciating for an hour"to hear the same conversation day in & day out is better than the Chinese Torture method. It"s enough to make you give up." A 1960 letter shows her reaction to the amazing success of To Kill A Mockingbird. 12 Dec. 1960: "We were surprised, stunned & dazed by the Princeton review" [R. P. Blackmur"s glowing review; a copy included in the archive]"The procurator of Judea is breathing heavily down my neck"all that lovely, lovely money is going straight to the Bureau of Internal Revenue tomorrow"Must stop and take my rock-and-roll Aunt Alice to the show. Elvis is on." 21 November 1961: "Esquire turned down"my pastiche" about "some white people who were segregationists & at the same time loathed & hated the K.K.K. This is an axiomatic impossibility, according to Esquire! I wanted to say that according to those lights, nine-tenths of the South is an axiomatic impossibility." She adds that she may be back in Kansas again in January, accompanying Truman Capote on his work for In Cold Blood. Manuscript material by Harper Lee is exceptionally rare. No other material of this early date--and certainly not with such revealing and personal content--has come to auction in the last 40 years.