6 private Harper Lee letters fail to sell at auction

    Six letters by “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee to one of her close friends has failed to sell at auction.

    The archive was expected to bring as much as $250,000 at the Christie’s sale Friday.

    The signed and typed letters were written to New York architect Harold Caufield between 1956 and 1961.

    Four of them date from before “Mockingbird” while Lee was caring for her ailing father, the model for her protagonist Atticus Finch.

    • WHYY thanks our sponsors — become a WHYY sponsor

    In one, she writes about her “stunned” reaction to the success of her 1960 novel, later made into a movie.

    The 89-year-old author is in declining health and lives in an assisted-living home in Monroeville, Alabama.

    The seller wasn’t identified.

     

     

    WHYY is your source for fact-based, in-depth journalism and information. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on financial support from readers like you. Please give today.

    Want a digest of WHYY’s programs, events & stories? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

    Together we can reach 100% of WHYY’s fiscal year goal