Harper Lee

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born

April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, The United States

gender

female

genre

Literature & Fiction

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Early life
Harper Lee, known as Nelle, was born in the Alabama town of Monroeville on April 28, 1926, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.
After graduating from high school in Monroeville,[2] Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50), pledging the Chi Omega sorority. While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year a...more Early life
Harper Lee, known as Nelle, was born in the Alabama town of Monroeville on April 28, 1926, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.
After graduating from high school in Monroeville,[2] Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50), pledging the Chi Omega sorority. While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, Ramma-Jamma. Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.
Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father.

'To Kill a Mockingbird'
Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the East 50th townhouse of her friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, she received a gift of a year's wages with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."[3] Within a year, she had a first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. Published July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal.(less)

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Books by Harper Lee

Average rating: 4.19 · 1,019,837 ratings · 31,238 reviews · 10 distinct works

	To Kill a Mockingbird 4.19 avg rating — 1,017,992 ratings — published 1960 — 4 editions	My rating:
	To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide 4.32 avg rating — 140 ratings — published 1989	My rating:
	To Kill a Mockingbird / The Agony and the Ecstasy / The Winter of Our Discontent / Fate is the Hunter by Harper Lee, Irving Stone, John Steinbeck 4.08 avg rating — 48 ratings	My rating:
	Hodder Graphics: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Philip Page 4.24 avg rating — 33 ratings	My rating:
	To Kill a Mockingbird (KnowledgeNotess 4.35 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2010	My rating:
	Novel Ideas Classic: To Kill A Mockingbird: Teacher Resource Book 4.50 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1997	My rating:
	To Kill a Mockingbird 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1960	My rating:
	Matar un ruiseñor 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings	My rating:
	Kuin surmaisi satakielen 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1960	My rating:
	Tappa laulurästast by Harper Lee, Valda Raud (Translator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2004	My rating:

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Quotes by Harper Lee

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

tags: reading

4,215 people liked it

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

tags: better-life-empathy

2,453 people liked it

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
- Atticus Finch”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

tags: atticus-finch , courage

2,182 people liked it

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Polls

What book would you like to read for September's group read. Group read starts September 1st and will end on September 30th.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

9 votes 25.7%

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

7 votes 20.0%

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

6 votes 17.1%

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia

4 votes 11.4%

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

2 votes 5.7%

Forget You by Jennifer Echols

2 votes 5.7%

The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade

2 votes 5.7%

White Cat by Holly Black

2 votes 5.7%

The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner

1 vote 2.9%

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

0 votes 0.0%

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

0 votes 0.0%

The Last Stormlord by Glenda Larke

0 votes 0.0%

The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

0 votes 0.0%

35 total votes

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Harper Lee

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Books by Harper Lee