Six private Harper Lee letters could fetch $250,000 at auction

Six letters by “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee to one of her closest friends could fetch as much as $250,000 at auction. Four of the letters date from before Mockingbird while Lee was caring for her ailing father, Amasa Coleman Lee, the model for her protagonist Atticus Finch. The signed and typed letters were written to Lee’s friend, New York architect Harold Caufield, between 1956 and 1961, according to Christie’s, which is selling them on Friday.In one, she writes about her stunned reaction to the huge success of the book, published in 1960 and made into a movie starring Gregory Peck two years later. “We were surprised, stunned & dazed by the Princeton review,” she wrote.

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.

Harper Lee, in a letter to Harold Caufield

Christie’s said the seller, who wished to remain anonymous, acquired the letters on the open market. The auctioneer intentionally has blurred the contents in its catalog and online to protect the author’s privacy. The 89-year-old Lee, who is in declining health and lives in an assisted-living home in Monroeville, Alabama, could not be reached for comment about the sale. The sale comes as Lee’s second book, “Go Set a Watchman,” is set to be released in July.

She’s arguably one of the most important American novelists of the post-war period who has not published a great deal.

Tom Lecky, Christie’s head of books and manuscripts

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