Lee, Harper 1926 -Author. Born Nelle Harper Lee, on April 28, 1926, in
Monroeville, Alabama, to Amasa Coleman and Frances
(Finch) Lee. She is descended from Robert E. Lee, Civil
War commander of the Confederate Army. Lee's father had
been born in Butler County, Alabama, in 1880 and moved
to Monroeville in 1913. He served in the Alabama State
Legislature from 1927 to 1939, and was the model for
Atticus Finch, hero of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lee attended a private school for women in Montgomery,
Alabama, from 1944 to 1945. She then transferred to the
University of Alabama, which she attended from 1945 to 1950. While a student at
Alabama, Lee contributed to several student publications, including the humor magazine
Rammer-Jammer. In 1947, she enrolled at the University of Alabama School of Law. Lee
traveled to England as an exchange student Oxford University. She left the University of
Alabama six months short of completing her law degree, although she later was awarded
an honorary degree by that institution.
Lee moved to New York City in 1950, and worked for several years as an reservations
clerk for Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways. When friends offered to loan
her enough money to write full-time for a year, she quit her job and penned the first draft
of To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1957, she submitted the manuscript to a publishing house
and began a two-year process of revision.
Shortly after Lee finished the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, Truman Capote invited
her to accompany him to Garden City, Kansas, in order to provide research for a nonfiction book involving the murder of a farm family. Lee and Capote traced their
friendship back to 1928, when Capote moved to Monroeville to live with his aunts, who
were the next-door-neighbors of the Lees. Lee based a character in To Kill a Mockingbird
on Capote, and he partially based a character in his first novel, Other Voices, Other
Rooms, on her. Lee helped Capote conduct interviews. Later, he raved to George
Plimpton of the New York Times Book Review that Lee was "a gifted woman, courageous,
and with a warmth that instantly kindles most people, however suspicious or dour." Lee
made several trips to Kansas with Capote, including one to attend the opening of the 1960
trial. Capote's best-selling book In Cold Blood was published in 1965 by Random House
bearing the dedication, "For Jack Dunphy and Harper Lee, with my love and gratitude."
In 1960, Lippincott published Lee's book. To Kill a Mockingbird takes place at the end of
the Great Depression in the small Alabama town of Maycomb, which is modeled after
Lee's hometown of Monroeville. The book covers three years in the life of its narrator,
Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, who lives in Maycomb with her older brother, Jem, her
widower father, Atticus, and the family housekeeper, Calpurnia. The story interweaves
two plot lines. The main one is Atticus Finch's defense of an African-American man,
Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping a poor white woman. Although Robinson is
clearly innocent, the jury finds him guilty, and he is killed trying to escape from prison.
Finch's defense of Robinson makes him the lightening rod for the town's rage and fear of
African-Americans.
The second plot line concerns Scout's and Jem's fascination with the notorious and
eccentric local recluse, Boo Radley. Radley saves their lives when the father of
Robinson's accuser tries to kill them on Halloween night. Both Robinson and Radley are
symbolic of the mockingbird in the title, which comes from the proverb "it is a sin to kill
a mockingbird." And according to Literature and Its Times, "the mockingbird is often
regarded as the symbol of the South" and Lee chose it to "represent the devotion, purity
of heart, and selflessness of [her] characters." The story of To Kill a Mockingbird takes
place during a tumultuous time in the South. The Great Depression, which began in 1929
and lasted through most of the 1930s, was particularly difficult for rural southerners, who
saw much of their population leave family farms and cotton plantations for northern cities
in search of education and work.
Lee is said to have been influenced greatly by the Scottsboro incident, which took place
in the 1930s. Nine African-American men were accused of raping two white women.
Every newspaper in Alabama covered the incident and several subsequent trials. Many
parallels exist between the real Scottsboro trial and Lee' fictional trial of Robinson. When
Lee began composing To Kill a Mockingbird, racial tensions were running high in the
South as a whole, especially in Alabama. People all over the United States followed
events like the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, launched by Rosa Parks' refusal to give up
her seat to a white passenger. In addition, the United States Supreme Court had ruled in
1954 that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This decision set off waves
of violence as African-American students attempted to enroll at previously all-white
institutions, including Lee's own alma mater, the University of Alabama.
The book rose above censure to become an American literary icon. In 1961, To Kill a
Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, making Lee the first woman to receive
the prize since 1942. The book sold 500,000 copies and had been translated into 10
languages. The same year, it was honored with the Brotherhood Award of the National
Conference of Christians and Jews. The book won the Bestseller's Paperback Award for
the year 1962, having sold four and a half million copies. Lee received an honorary
degree from Mount Holyoke College. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Lee
to the National Council on the Arts.
Lee never tried to follow up her first success. After To Kill a Mockingbird, the only
things she published were two magazine articles, both in 1961. "Love In Other Words"
appeared in Vogue, and "Christmas to Me" was printed in McCall's.
© 2001 Gale Group