March 2016 | Nate Pedersen

Harper Lee Letters Heading to Auction

Twenty-nine Harper Lee letters to various friends and acquaintances are up for auction today, March 31, from Nate D. Sanders in Los Angeles, covering a wide range of topics. 

                                                                                                                                                                   One of the letter highlights is a missive Lee penned to a friend after a 1990 visit to Donald Trump's Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. Lee was... not impressed:

                                                                                                                                                                       "...the worst punishment God can devise for this sinner is to make her spirit reside eternally at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City."

                                                                                                                                                                       42397a_lg.jpegIn another letter, Lee praises the novel Tuscaloosa by W. Glasgow Phillips. The novel, now out of print, but easily procured online, is set in Alabama in 1972 and follows a young man who falls in love with an inmate at a mental institution.

                                                                                                                                                                      Lee writes of the novel, "Nowadays there's so damn little to praise, my heart leaps up when I behold a beautiful English sentence."

                                                                                                                                                                    Lee also expresses her affection, in a separate letter, for Elise Sanguinetti, calling her "the finest of Alabama's writers."

                                                                                                                                                                        The letters, to be sold separtely, have starting bids of $750. Online bidding is available on the Nate D. Sanders website.