The Life of Nelle Harper Lee

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The Life of Nelle Harper Lee

On April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, Nelle Harper Lee was born to Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee. Along with her siblings, Alice, Louise, and Edwin, Harper was educated in Monroeville Public Schools before going on to attend Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. After a year at Huntingdon, Lee decided to follow in the footsteps of her father and began studying law at the University of Alabama in 1945 [2]. She left there to study abroad at Oxford University, Wellington Court in England [4]. After returning to the United States, she continued her education at the University of Alabama. However, in 1950, six months prior to completing her law degree, Lee moved to New York hoping to begin a career as a writer. During this time, she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Airlines and British Overseas Airways. She also worked in Holcombe, Kansas, as a research assistant for Truman Capote's novel In Cold Blood [6].

In 1957, Lee submitted a manuscript to JB Lippincott Company, which consisted of two essays and three short stories. She was advised to re-write her work perhaps by expanding one of the short stories into a novel. For the next two and a half years, Lee revised the work under the supervision of her editor, Tay Hohoff [6]. Finally, in 1960, Harper Lee's first and only book, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published. The story, which is set in a small Alabama town during the 1930's, is narrated by Scout, a six year old girl. She tells the events surrounding a court case in which her father, Atticus Finch, defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been wrongly accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman [4]. The novel was extremely successful, selling over fifteen millio...

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....ca/Culture/HarperLee/bio.html>.

3. "Harper Lee: A Biography." Elysium. 24 Sept. 2000. (Accessed 1 Oct. 2000) .

4. Liukkonen, Petri. "Calendar of Authors." Pegasos. 1999. (Accessed 1 Oct. 2000) .

5. Montgomery, Leigh. "Harper Lee Still Prizes Privacy Over Publicity." The Christian Science Monitor. 11 Sept. 1997. (Accessed 1 Oct. 2000) .

6. Sigelman, Katherine. "ClassicNotes on Harper Lee." Classicnotes by GradeSaver. 6 Feb. 2000. (Accessed 1 Oct. 2000) .

Note: Picture of Harper Lee courtesy of the Chebucto Community Net. .

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