Editing To Kill a Mockingbird (section)

== Biographical background and publication ==
Born in 1926, [[Harper Lee]] grew up in the Southern town of Monroeville, Alabama, where she became a close friend of soon-to-be-famous writer  [[Truman Capote]]. She attended [[Huntingdon College]] in [[Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery]] (1944–45), and then studied law at the [[University of Alabama]] (1945–49). While attending college, she wrote for campus literary magazines: ''Huntress'' at Huntingdon and the humor magazine ''Rammer Jammer'' at the University of Alabama. At both colleges, she wrote short stories and other works about racial injustice, a rarely mentioned topic on such campuses at the time.<ref>Shields, pp. 79–99.</ref> In 1950, Lee moved to New York City, where she worked as a reservation clerk for [[British Overseas Airways Corporation]]; there, she began writing a collection of essays and short stories about people in Monroeville. Hoping to be published, Lee presented her writing in 1957 to a [[literary agent]] recommended by Capote. An editor at [[J. B. Lippincott & Co.|J. B. Lippincott]], who bought the manuscript, advised her to quit the airline and concentrate on writing.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.archives.state.al.us/famous/academy/h_lee.html|title=Nelle Harper Lee|work=Alabama Academy of Honor|publisher=Alabama Department of Archives and History|year=2001|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100730171044/http://archives.alabama.gov/famous/Academy/h_lee.html |archive-date=30 July 2010|accessdate=2007-11-13}}</ref>

Donations from friends allowed her to write uninterrupted for a year.<ref>[http://www.archives.state.al.us/famous/academy/h_lee.html Nelle Harper Lee] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071218080053/http://www.archives.state.al.us/famous/academy/h_lee.html |date=December 18, 2007 }} Alabama Academy of Honor: Alabama Department of Archives and History (2001). Retrieved on November 13, 2007.</ref> After finishing the first draft and returning it to Lippincott, the manuscript, at that point titled "Go Set a Watchman",<ref name=autogenerated2>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/books/the-invisible-hand-behind-harper-lees-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html|author=Mahler, Jonathan|title=The Invisible Hand Behind Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird'|date=12 July 2015|work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref>  fell into the hands of Therese von Hohoff Torrey, known professionally as [[Tay Hohoff]]. Hohoff was impressed: "[T]he spark of the true writer flashed in every line," she would later recount in a corporate history of Lippincott,<ref name=autogenerated2 /> but as Hohoff saw it, the manuscript was by no means fit for publication. It was, as she described it, "more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel." During the following two and a half years, she led Lee from one draft to the next until the book finally achieved its finished form.<ref name=autogenerated2/>

After the "Watchman" title was rejected, it was re-titled ''Atticus'' but Lee renamed it ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' to reflect that the story went beyond a character portrait. The book was published on July 11, 1960.<ref>Shields, p. 129.</ref> The editorial team at Lippincott warned Lee that she would probably sell only several thousand copies.<ref>Shields, p. 14.</ref> In 1964, Lee recalled her hopes for the book when she said,

<blockquote>I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird.'&nbsp;...&nbsp;I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.<ref name="lapl"/></blockquote>

Instead of a "quick and merciful death", ''[[Reader's Digest Condensed Books]]'' chose the book for reprinting in part, which gave it a wide readership immediately.<ref>Shields, p.&nbsp;242.</ref> Since the original publication, the book has never been out of print.<ref>Johnson, ''Casebook'' p. xii</ref>