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MaKensey Sanders
Lilley
Honors English 1
26 April 2010
Nelle Harper Lee:
The One Work Wonder
Nelle Harper Lee is descended from General Robert E. Lee and was born in Monroeville,
Alabama. Her father Amasa Coleman Lee was a lawyer and her mother was Frances Cunnigham
(Finch). Her family founded Finchburg after moving from Virginia to Monroe County. Born on
April 28, 1926, she is the youngest of four. Lee received a great deal of education: Huntingdon
College from 1944 to 1955, the University of Alabama from 1945 to 1949, one year at Oxford
University and in 1997 she attended Spring Hill College. She worked as reservation clerk in New
York City with Eastern Airlines and BOAC. However she quit this job to focus on her writing
and traveled back and forth between New York and Monroeville because her father was sick.
Lee’s only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, took some time to get published. She took the
manuscript to the J.B. Lippincott Company in 1957, but the editors asked her to rewrite it so
many times that it was not published till 1960. The publication of her novel was well worth the
wait. It won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of
Christians and Jews in 1961, the Best Sellers’ Paperback of the Year in 1962, and was named the
Best Novel of the Century by the Library Journal in 1999. It was also made into a movie in 1962
and received an Academy Award. In addition, she also received Alabama Library Association
Award in 1961, the ATTY Award from the Spector Gadon and Rosen Foundation in 2005, the
Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award in 2005, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in

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2007. In June of 1966, she was asked to be in the National Council of Arts by President Lyndon
B. Johnson. She was a member from 1966 till 1977. Lee also received honorary degrees: one
from the University of Alabama in 1990 and one from Spring Hill College in 1997.
To Kill a Mockingbird is based of the Scottsboro Case of 1931 that went on when she
was only five years old. The loving character of Atticus Finch was based on Lee’s father. Dill,
the eccentric friend of Jem and Scout, was based on Lee’s own childhood friend Truman Capote.
Capote, in turn, based the character of Isabel in one of his novels In Other Voices, Other Rooms
which was published in 1948. Capote also dedicated In Cold Blood, published in 1965, to Lee
and his partner Jack Dunphy. Capote and Lee traveled to Kansas in 1959 to do research for this
book on the Clutter family murders.
Other than this well-known novel, she also wrote articles for magazines. “Love: In Other
Words” was published for Vogue in 1961. “Christmas to Me” and “When Children Discover
America” were published for McCalls. “Christmas to Me” was published in 1962 and “When
Children Discover America” in 1965. In 1983, Lee read her essay “Romance and High
Adventure” at the Alabama History and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama.
Nelle Harper Lee is looked up to in our society and held with great respect for her
wisdom and depth. This wisdom and depth will be carried on through generations with her
powerful, inspiring novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee’s numerous awards and honors prove just
how amazing of an author she is.

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Works Cited
“Lee, Harper 1926-.” The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999. Credo Reference. Web. 26 April 2010.
“Lee, Harper [Nelle].” Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature. London: Continuum,
2005. Credo Reference. Web. 15 April 2010.
“Lee, Harper (Nelle Harper Lee).” Marquis Who's Who in America. New Providence:
Marquis Who's Who LLC, 2010. Credo Reference. Web. 16 April 2010.
“Lee, (Nelle) Harper.” Chambers Biographical Dictionary. London: Chamber Harrap, 2007.
Credo Reference. Web. 27 April 210.
“Lee, (Nelle) Harper.” The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography.
Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 2005. Credo Reference. Web. 15 April 2010.
“Lee, (Nelle) Harper (1926-).” The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and
Weather Guide. Abington: Helicon, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 15 April 2010.