Atticus Finch

The Biography

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By Joseph Crespino

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$17.99

Who was the real Atticus Finch? A prize-winning historian reveals the man behind the legend

The publication of Go Set a Watchman in 2015 forever changed how we think about Atticus Finch. Once seen as a paragon of decency, he was reduced to a small-town racist. How are we to understand this transformation?

In Atticus Finch, historian Joseph Crespino draws on exclusive sources to reveal how Harper Lee’s father provided the central inspiration for each of her books. A lawyer and newspaperman, A. C. Lee was a principled opponent of mob rule, yet he was also a racial paternalist. Harper Lee created the Atticus of Watchman out of the ambivalence she felt toward white southerners like him. But when a militant segregationist movement arose that mocked his values, she revised the character in To Kill a Mockingbird to defend her father and to remind the South of its best traditions. A story of family and literature amid the upheavals of the twentieth century, Atticus Finch is essential to understanding Harper Lee, her novels, and her times.

  • "On the book shelf in my Broadway dressing room, Joe Crespino sat right next to Harper Lee. Atticus Finch: The Biography was instrumental in helping me truly understand one of America's great heroes, fictional or otherwise."
    Jeff Daniels

On Sale
Oct 20, 2020
Page Count
272 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9781541644939

Joseph Crespino

About the Author

Joseph Crespino is the Jimmy Carter Professor of history at Emory University. He is the author of In Search of Another Country, winner of the 2008 Lillian Smith Book Award from the Southern Regional Council, and Strom Thurmond’s America. He lives in Decatur, Georgia.

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