To know Harper Lee was to admire her, says Charles J. Shields, who wrote a best-selling portrait of the famed American author without her cooperation but with great appreciation for her integrity and her work.
In 2006, Shields published the biography “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee” to warm acclaim from most readers. Garrison Keillor rhapsodized over it in The New York Times Book Review.
Nelle Harper Lee’s reaction to it, however, was less than flattering.
“I spoke and traveled a lot in the South,” Shields said in a recent phone interview, “and people would come forward and say, ‘I’m a friend of Miss Lee’s, and she tells people not to read your book.’”
That didn’t deter Shields from continuing to chronicle Lee’s life, next in a young adult version, “I Am Scout,” which won acclaim from the American Library Association as one of the best books for young people in 2008.
Now Shields has revised, updated and reframed his original biography to include the momentous last decade of Lee’s life, especially the publication of “Go Set a Watchman,” released in July 2015, seven months before her death.
This week, Shields will visit Greenwood to read and sign “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee from Scout to Go Set a Watchman” at Turnrow Books.
Shields said he doesn’t want to toot his own horn, but he’s not aware of any biographer who has ever gone back and revised a published book when significant new facts were revealed.
“Biographies most often come out after someone has died,” he said. “And if new information comes out, a new book comes out about that.”
But Lee’s life, lived privately in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, changed dramatically in its last 10 years when she filed lawsuits against the town’s historical society, fired her agent and sued to take back copyrights to “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“So much happened in the last 10 years of her life,” said Shields. “Two movies were released in which major actresses played her” — Sandra Bullock in 2005’s “Capote” and Catherine Keener in the following year’s “Infamous.”
Most important was the publication of “To Set a Watchman,” which received decidedly mixed, puzzled reviews.
“That made a big difference to me as a literary biographer,” Shields said. “The question had always lingered, How could a woman write a book so beloved and never write another one?”
By most accounts, Lee wrote “Watchman” first, and with the help of an experienced editor, Tay Hohoff, it became “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The book went through three distinct drafts.
“I believe it’s an early iteration of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’” Shields said. “From (Lee’s) camp, principally from her lawyer, the story was that no one knew of its existence and after Alice Lee, her sister, died at age 103, they went through the safety deposit box and, lo and behold, there was ‘Go Set a Watchman.’
“It was always there, but the family and others representing her interests didn’t want it published. After you’ve won the Pulitzer Prize and pulled out in a Rolls-Royce, you don’t drive off in a Volkswagen.”
Shields said he wrote both his first biography of Lee and the revision out of deep respect for her.
“My feelings for her didn’t change (between the two books), because one thing I admired about Miss Lee is that she was always herself. Scout is the template for the woman Harper Lee became. She was consistent.
“She never sought approval and always spoke her mind. She was not one to curry favor or seek recognition. She valued her privacy.”
Lee was precocious as a child, Shields said, and modeled herself on her father, A.C. Lee, on whom Lee’s character Atticus Finch is based. Shields wishes he could have known more about the attorney.
“There was a very brief window at the end of his life when he seemed to be changing his stand as a segregationist,” said Shields. “The civil rights movement was in full swing, his daughter’s book had come out and she was famous.”
The most perplexing aspect of “Go Set a Watchman” to avid Harper Lee fans, and the thing Shields has been questioned about most often, he said, is what happened to Atticus, the gentle, progressive father and symbol of fairness in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” who is depicted as a racist in the second book.
A former teacher with a master’s degree in history, Shields’ studies focused on the slave trade in America. “Go Set a Watchman,” he said, is not a good novel; it’s a typically flawed first effort. But it is a “very, very important cultural artifact,” articulating the difficulties of changing attitudes in men like Atticus of that time period, the middle of the 20th century.
“I’ve always had a great interest in Southern history politically and economically. Every time I go down (South), I’m looking for signs of the way things once were,” said Shields, who grew up near Chicago and now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“All you have to do is stand at the edge of one of those cotton fields that stretches all the way to the horizon to imagine the past.”
Shields will read from and sign his revised “Mockingbird” at Turnrow Books, 304 Howard St., at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
