Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926, the daughter of attorney and state legislator, Amasa Coleman Lee and his wife, Frances Cunningham (Finch) Lee. She was the youngest of the four Lee children and in spite of being a tomboy, was an avid reader. Her next-door neighbors were the Faulk sisters whose nephew spent a great deal of time with them. The nephew and Harper became close friends for life. The Faulk sisters’ nephew was Truman Capote.

She graduated from high school in Monroeville and in 1944 entered the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1945, she enrolled in the University of Alabama to work toward a degree in law. She was a member of the Chi Omega sorority and wrote for several student publications. She spent approximately a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer. She never received her law degree but later studied for one summer in Oxford, England.
In 1950, she relocated to New York City and took a job as a reservation clerk with Eastern Airlines.

She continued to work as a reservation clerk for most of that decade, while devoting most of her spare time to writing. She lived on a shoestring budget, making trips back and forth to Monroeville to care for her aging father.

She had written several long stories in the past and in November of 1956 began an association with an agent. In December, 1956, while visiting friends, Michael and Joy Williams, she was handed a gift. Upon opening it, she found a year’s wages and a message, “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas!”

By December of 1957, Harper completed the first draft of her novel and was working with editor Tay Hohoff of J.B. Lippincott and Company. In the summer of 1959, the completed manuscript was in the hands of Lippincott. Her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was about to undergo its greatest judgment, that of the reading public.

It was published and released to the public on July 11, 1960. To the surprise of Harper, the book immediately took its place at the top of the best seller list and received great acclaim! In 1961, it garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Harper Lee.

Today, there are more than 30 million copies in print and in 1999 it was declared the “Best Novel of the Century” according to a poll by the Library Journal.

In an interview in 1964, Harper said, “I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement, public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.”

Many of the details of To Kill a Mockingbird are biographical. Truman Capote verified much of this. The story’s narrator, a girl named Scout, was the tomboy Nelle Harper Lee as a child. The character Gill was supposedly Truman Capote, himself. Boo Radley was a real person of a different name of course, who lived in Monroeville and had a practice of leaving small items in a tree for the kids to take. And the hero of the story, Atticus Finch, was of course, Harper’s own father, lawyer A.C. Lee. A.C. Lee was involved in defending a black man accused of rape and the defendant did die when he tried to escape. The trial was held in the Monroe County Courthouse. And yes, just as shown in the movie, the courthouse has round courtrooms!

In 1962, the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird was released, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and introducing a youthful Robert Duvall as the much-maligned and feared, Boo Radley. Gregory Peck received an Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus Finch.

As a result of the movie, Harper became lifelong friends with screen writer, Horton Foote and actor Gregory Peck and his family. Gregory Peck’s grandson is named after her, Harper Lee Voll.

After she completed To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper accompanied Capote to Holcomb, Kansas to help research the murder of a family there. Both initially thought it was to be only an article on the town’s response to this violent crime, but Capote saw much more and continued work on it. In 1966 it was released as Capote’s best seller, In Cold Blood.

Harper had been offered honorary degrees from various universities, but frequently denied any requests that she make a speech.

At the urging of Gregory Peck's widow, Veronique, she traveled from Monroeville to Los Angeles in 2005 to accept the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award.

On May 21, 2006, she accepted an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame. When she was accepting the award, she looked across the audience of graduating seniors and saw that each of them was holding up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

On November 5, 2007, Harper Lee stood in the White House before President George W. Bush as he awarded her the highest civilian award the U.S. has to offer, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Following the release of the book and the movie, the awards received by Harper Lee are simply too numerous to address here.