THE REAL WATCHMEN

Rebecca Tucker reports on the people protecting (or abusing) Harper Lee’s legacy over five decades

1970s (exact date unknown): Eugene Winick, an agent at New York City literary agency McIntosh & Otis, is hired as Harper Lee’s agent

1984: Winick becomes agent and attorney for the Harper Lee estate

1988: Leigh Ann Winick, Eugene Winick’s daughter, marries Samuel Pinkus, also a literary agent

2001: Pinkus is named president of McIntosh & Otis as Eugene Winick’s health begins to fail

2002: Pinkus takes Harper Lee on as a client; that same year, he would leave McIntosh & Otis to start his own agency, Veritas,

bringing Lee with him

2006: Charles Shields, a biographer, receives an “imperious letter” warning him to cease further contact with Lee and her sister, Alice May 5, 2007: Harper Lee signs away the copyright to To Kill A Mockingbird to Samuel Pinkus. It was a move that would become increasingly contentious and controversial, and would be the basis of a 2013 lawsuit against Pinkus accusing him of taking advantage of Lee, who had recently suffered a stroke that left her deaf and partially blind

2008: Mediation between McIntosh & Otis and Veritas results in a settlement regarding commissions received by Veritas by authors who had “diverted” from M&O. The terms of the settlement — and the authors involved — are unclear

2009: According to a lawsuit filed in 2013, this was the year Lee fired Pinkus as her agent; however, Pinkus insisted that Veritas