Harper Lee

Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist best known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. It earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and has since become a modern American literary masterpiece. Lee has received various honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 for her contributions to writing. Truman Capote, a personal friend of hers, needed help with research for his book In Cold Blood, so she helped him (1966). To Kill a Mockingbird's character Dill Harris was based on Capote.

To Kill a Mockingbird's plot and characters are based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an incident that occurred near her hometown in 1936 when she was ten years old. As seen through the eyes of two children, the story explores the irrationality of adult attitudes regarding race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. It was inspired by racial views in Monroeville, Alabama, where she grew up. Go Set a Watchman, published in July 2015 as a sequel to Mockingbird but later proved to be an earlier manuscript of Mockingbird, was written in the mid-1950s.

Nationality: U.S