To Kill A Mockingbird

 

Harper Lee

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         Nelle Harper Lee was born in Alabama on April 28, 1926.  She lived in the small town of  Monroeville, where he father was a respected lawyer.  When she was young she was more of a tomboy and liked to read.  After she graduated High School she went to college at Huntingdon College for a year and then went for her degree in law at the University of Alabama.  When she was there she wrote for the campus humor magazine.  She never finished her law degree.  She moved to New York in 1950, and worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines.  In the late 50's she turned to writing.  
        
        Within a year she had a first draft finished.  She completed To Kill A Mockingbird in the summer of 1959.  The book was published July 11, 1960.  Harper wrote other novels but none of them got as much as attention as this book.  To Kill A Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.  Harper never really expected such success of the book, but she is sure glad she wrote it.  Harper also wrote Love-In Other words, Christmas to Me, and When Children Discover America.
    
       In her lifetime she has won various awards such as, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she was named into the National Council on the Arts, the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award and many more.  Harper was an author who kept to herself.  She did not really want all the popularity and whatever, she has no requests for interviews or public appearances and has published no further books after To Kill A Mockingbird.