Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926. She was the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman
Lee and Frances Finch Lee. Her father was a newspaper editor and proprietor turned lawyer. Lee was very much a tomboy.
Lee was neighbors and went to school with the now famous Truman Capote.
The basis from
which she wrote her only published novel, "To Kill A Mockingbird", was based on the events of a court case called the Scottsboro
Case. Lee was brought up in a time when racial segregation was still very much a part of American life.
When she graduated high school, she enrolled in an all-girl college called Huntingdon College in Montgomery. She then went
on to pursue a law degree at the university of Alabama. Lee did not gain a law degree and later continued her studies at Oxford
in England, where writing had become more appealing to her.
"To Kill a Mockingbird", was published July
11, 1960. It was an automatic best seller and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. There were 15 million copies
in print and earned a place in the canon of American Literature. In 1999 it was voted the best book of the Century by
the Library Journal. President Johnson named Lee to the council of arts in June 1966.
Since her popularity with "To Kill
A Mockingbird", Lee has since published only a few short essays in Magazines. "To Kill A Mockingbird", would become adapted
as a screen play and released into theaters in 1962. Harper Lee is still alive today to reap the rewards of her still triumphing
novel.
