Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. She grew up as a tomboy in a small town and was the youngest of four children. Lee’s father was a lawyer who also served in the state legislature from 1926-1938. Furthermore, he owned a part of the local newspaper. Lee’s mother suffered from a mental illness and rarely left the house. Harper Lee is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lee attended public school in Monroeville. After that, she attended Huntingdon College, a private school for women in Montgomery for a year. She then transferred to the University of Alabama. Lee focused on her studies and writing. She was a part of the literary honor society and the glee club. Upon graduating, Lee studied at Oxford University. She returned to the University of Alabama to study law but withdrew six months before graduation.

In 1949, Lee arrived in New York City. There, she worked as a reservations clerk for Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways. She wrote several essays and stories while she was in New York, however, none were published. Her agent encouraged Lee to develop one short story and make it a novel. Lee quit working and her friends, Michael Martin Brown and his wife Joy, gave her a Christmas present. Their gift was to support her for a year so that she could focus on her writing career.

The Browns helped Lee find an agent, Maurice Crain. He got the publisher J.B. Lippincott Company interested in her work. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and it was an instant success. A year after the novel was published, 500,000 copies were sold and the novel was translated into 10 languages.