I think doubts about Harper Lee’s authorship “because she never wrote anything else” are disingenuous at best. Plenty of good writers only have one good novel in them.
What people really mean is she couldn’t possibly have written an American masterpiece because she didn’t evolve out of the East Coast literati; she’s from Alabama. And she went to the University of Alabama. How... quaint. Poor thing must not have been able to get into Harvard.
When she was a struggling writer in New York, she didn’t intern at Doubleday or hang out with Andy Warhol at Studio 54. In short, she didn’t do any of the things successful writers are supposed to do.
Questioning whether Harper Lee wrote what she wrote is all a smokescreen for regional bigotry.
At least in part I'm sure. Most such animosities, however, are over determined sorts of attitudes. Multiple things can augment and foster that kind of ill will. I imagine there some anti-woman writer prejudice in there as well. Plus, everyone's at least a little envious and resentful in private when literary lightning strikes thee and not me.
How Capote figures in the mix I haven't a clue.
I wonder though, concerning regional bigotry, would she have been received differently if she hailed instead from, say, Oxford, Mississippi?
Worse, she was from a small town in Alabama -- Monroeville.
Which, if you know that part of Alabama, she depicted the town and its people perfectly.
Unlike most East Coast literati, she knew her subject...and depicted it with love and respect.
Just as most questioning of the authorship of Shakespeare is based on class bias.
A commoner wrote the most famous works in the English language? Must have been a nobleman behind it! / s
This does speak poorly of her judgment.