| Harper Lee |
| Lee studied first at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama (1944-45), then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-49), including one year abroad at Oxford University, England. She worked as a reservation clerk for Eastern Airlines in New York City until the late 50s, when she resolved to devote herself to writing. Lee lived a frugal lifestyle, traveling between her cold-water apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her ailing father. She worked in Holcombe, Kansas, as a research assistant for Truman Capote's novel In Cold Blood in 1959. |
| Lee published her first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, in 1960, after a two-year period of revising and rewriting under the guidance of her editor, Tay Hohoff, of the J. B. Lippincott Company. To Kill a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize, despite mixed critical reviews. The novel was highly popular, selling more than fifteen million copies. Though she delved into her own experiences as a child in Monroeville, Lee intended for the book to impart the sense of any small Deep South town and the universal characteristics of people everywhere. The book was made into a successful movie in 1962, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus. |
| Lee was named to the National Council of Arts in June of 1966 by President Johnson, and has received numerous honorary doctorates since then. She continues to live in New York and Monroeville but prefers to live a relatively private existence, granting few interviews or and giving few speeches. She has published only a few short essays since her publishing debut ("Love--In Other Words" in Vogue, 1961; "Christmas to Me" in McCalls, 1961; and "When Children Discover America" in McCalls, 1965). |
| Credit goes to http://www.gradesaver.com |
Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, to Amasa Coleman Lee and
Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Harper Lee grew up in the small southwestern
Alabama town of Monroeville. Her father, a former newspaper editor and
proprietor, was a lawyer who also served on the state legislature (1926-38). As a
child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader and enjoyed the friendship of
her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote, who provided the basis
of the character of Dill in her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Harper Lee grew up in the small southwestern
Alabama town of Monroeville. Her father, a former newspaper editor and
proprietor, was a lawyer who also served on the state legislature (1926-38). As a
child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader and enjoyed the friendship of
her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote, who provided the basis
of the character of Dill in her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
| Lee was only five years old in when the first trials began in April 1931 in the small Alabama town of Scottsboro surrounding the purported rapes of two white women by nine young black men. The defendants, who were nearly lynched before being brought to court, were not provided with the services of a lawyer until the first day of trial. Despite medical testimony that the women had not been raped, the all-white jury found the men guilty of the crime and sentenced all but the youngest, a twelve-year-old, to death. Six years of subsequent trials saw most of these convictions repealed and all but one of the men freed or paroled. The Scottsboro case left a deep impression on the young Lee, who would use it later as the rough basis for the events in To Kill a Mockingbird. |
