Harper Lee

a. 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 she 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.

b. --- Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville Alabama.

--- Lee was the youngest of four children born to Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee.

--- She attended Huntingdon College 1944-45, studied law at the University of Alabama 1945-49, and studied one year at Oxford University.

--- In the 1950s she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC in New York City.

--- In 1957 Lee submitted the manuscript of her novel to the J. B. Lippincott Company.

--- After being instructed to rewrite it, Lee worked on it for two and a half more years

--- In 1960 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Lee's only book, was published.

--- In 1961 she had two articles published: "Love --- In Other Words" in Vogue, and "Christmas To Me" in McCalls.

--- In June of 1966, Harper Lee was one of two persons named by President Johnson to the National Council of Arts.

c.

"To Kill a Mockingbird." (1960)
"Christmas to Me". (December 1961)
"When Children Discover America". (August 1965). "Cold Blood" (1966) Capote and lee collaborated "The Long Goodbye" (mid-1980s)

d. Pulitzer Prize (1961)
Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1961)
Alabama Library Association Award (1961)
Bestsellers Paperback of the Year Award (1962)
Member, National Council on the Arts (1966)
Best Novel of the Century, Library Journal (1999)
Alabama Humanities Award (2002)
ATTY Award, Spector Gadon & Rosen Foundation (2005)
Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award (2005)
Honorary degree, University of Notre Dame (2006)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (2007)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (2007)

e. To Kill a Mockingbird was written and published amidst the most significant and conflict-ridden social change in the South since the Civil War and Reconstruction. Inevitably, despite its mid-1930s setting, the story told from the perspective of the 1950s voices the conflicts, tensions, and fears induced by this transition.