This Goodly Land

Harper Lee (April 28, 1926–present)

Other Names Used

• Nelle Harper Lee: full name

Alabama Connections

• Monroeville, Monroe County: birthplace, childhood residence, adult residence
• Montgomery, Montgomery County: education
• Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County: education

Selected Works

• Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1960. Rpt. New York: Warner Books, 1982. Rpt. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Association, 1993. Rpt. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.

Literary Awards

• Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 1961, for To Kill a Mockingbird
• Alabama Author Award, Alabama Library Association, 1961, for To Kill a Mockingbird

Biographical Information

Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, Ala. For part of her youth, Truman Capote lived next door, and the two played together as children. Lee’s father was an attorney, and she sometimes accompanied him to court. Lee attended Huntingdon College and the law school at the University of Alabama but left both before completing a degree. She moved to New York to be a writer and supported herself by working as an airline reservation clerk. Generous financial support from friends allowed her to quit this job and devote herself to writing full-time. The result was her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which used a disguised version of her hometown as its setting and various family members and friends as models for some of its characters.

After To Kill a Mockingbird was accepted for publication, Lee accompanied her childhood friend Truman Capote to Kansas to assist him with research and interviews for his book In Cold Blood, which he dedicated to her. To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961, and a film version was released in 1962. In 1966, Lee was appointed to the newly created National Council of the Arts and served on it through 1972. Although she wrote some articles in the 1960s that were published in national magazines, she has never published another novel. Lee lives quietly, shunning publicity, and divides her time between New York and Monroeville.

Interests and Themes

Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird gives a human face to the civil rights struggle for many readers. It deals with universal themes of morality, courage, prejudice, and the loss of childhood innocence, yet it also gives an insightful and loving portrait of small-town Alabama life.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Books

• Barnard, Catherine. Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2003. For younger readers.
• Bloom, Harold, ed. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Chelsea House Publishers: Philadelphia, 1999.
• Johnson, Claudia D. To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.
• Madden, Kerry. Harper Lee: A Twentieth-Century Life. New York: Viking, 2009. For younger readers.
• O’Neill, Terry, ed. Readings on To Kill a Mockingbird. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000.
• Petry, Alice Hall, ed. On Harper Lee: Essays and Reflections. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.
• Shields, Charles J. Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. New York: Henry Holt, 2006.
• Shields, Charles J. I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2008. For younger readers.

Reference Articles

• Erisman, Fred. "The Romantic Regionalism of Harper Lee". Alabama Review 26.2. (1973): 122-136.

Reference Book Chapters and Encyclopedia Entries

• Going, William T. "Store and Mockingbird: Two Pulitzer Novels about Alabama"; Essays on Alabama Literature. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, . 9-31.

Reference Web Sites

• Monroe County Heritage Museums. http://www.tokillamockingbird.com/ .
• Anderson, Nancy G. "Nelle Harper Lee". The Encyclopedia of Alabama. 2008. Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1126.
• Wayne Flynt. "To Kill a Mockingbird". The Encyclopedia of Alabama. 2008. Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1140.

Photo courtesy of the Alabama Writers' Forum.

Last updated on May 30, 2008.