Harper Lee
April 28, 1926 — February 19, 2016 — Monroeville, Alabama
Harper Lee wrote one novel that changed American literature. To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, won the Pulitzer Prize and has never gone out of print — one of the most assigned books in American schools for sixty years running.
Background
Born Nelle Harper Lee on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, she grew up in the segregated South alongside childhood friend Truman Capote. She studied law at the University of Alabama and briefly attended Oxford before dropping out and moving to New York, where she worked as an airline reservationist while writing in her spare time. Two friends funded a year of writing time, and she used it to complete her only novel.
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird was published July 11, 1960, and became an immediate bestseller. Set in Depression-era Alabama, its story of attorney Atticus Finch defending a Black man falsely accused of rape put the moral failures of American racism into language a generation could understand. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was adapted into the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck, who won the Academy Award. The book has sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.
Did You Know?
Lee's given name was Nelle — her maternal grandmother's name spelled backwards (Ellen). She dropped it professionally to avoid mispronunciation. Her childhood neighbor in Monroeville, Alabama was Truman Capote, who appears in To Kill a Mockingbird as the character Dill.
Later Life & Legacy
Lee lived intensely privately for decades — almost no interviews, no public appearances. The civil rights themes of her novel had a direct counterpart in the theater: the same year Mockingbird was published, Louis Gossett Jr. was performing in A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway — another foundational work of the same cultural moment. A second novel, Go Set a Watchman, was published in 2015. She died on February 19, 2016.