Author

 

 

 

Nelle Harper Lee was born April 28,1926 in Monroeville, Alabama.  She was educated in the Monroeville Public Schools and subsequently enrolled at The University of Alabama for the study of law.  She left the University in 1950 before completing her law degree.  She moved to New York City and worked as a reservation clerk for Eastern Air Lines.  Lee began to develop an interest in writing at the early age of seven and says that her law studies proved to be "good training for a writer" because of the need for logical thinking as well as the feeling that law cases can make great story ideas.  After her arrival in New York, she approached a literary agent with manuscripts of two essays and three short stories.  The agent encouraged her to develop the stories into a novel; and hence, the creation of To Kill A Mockingbird began.  In order to concentrate on her writing, she quit her job with the airline and moved into a cold-water apartment with crude furnishings.  Her father's sudden illness forced her to journey to Monroeville where she became surrounded by the very things that would become the setting for the novel. In 1957, she submitted the manuscript of the novel to the J.B. Lippincott Company.  She was told it was less like a novel than a series of short stories strung together.  She spent the next two-and-a-half years reworking the manuscript with the help of her editor, Tay Hohoff.  Finally, in July 1960, To Kill A  Mockingbird was published.  Since the publication of this novel, it has been a repeat best-seller, it has been printed and taught worldwide, and it has won numerous accolades including the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  Praise for this novel and Lee is abundant.  In his review for the Chicago Sunday Tribune (July 10, 1960), Richard Sullivan called the book "a first novel of...rare excellence...a story so admirably done that it must be called both honorable and engrossing." Truman Capote described Harper Lee as "someone rare...a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humor."  Harper Lee describes her novel as, "a love story pure and simple."             Moritz, Charles, ed. Current Biography. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1961

RELATED LINKS: 1960 Book Review Author Biography