Harper Lee

Harper Lee (born April 28, 1926, Monroeville, Alabama, U.S.—died February 19, 2016, Monroeville) was an American writer nationally acclaimed for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), one of the most widely read works of fiction in American literature. A coming-of-age story about a child’s awakening to the racism and prejudice in her Southern small town, it in many ways reflected Lee’s experiences growing up in rural Alabama during the Great Depression. After its publication, Lee led a private life away from the spotlight and published little else. Then, late in her life, she released Go Set a Watchman (2015), which was treated as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird.

A Southern childhood and a background in law

Harper Lee was the youngest of four children born to Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father was a lawyer who by all accounts resembled the hero of her celebrated novel in his sound citizenship and warmheartedness. The plot of To Kill a Mockingbird is based in part on his unsuccessful youthful defense of two African American men who were convicted of murder. It was also inspired by the 1931 case of the “Scottsboro Boys,” nine Black youths who were wrongly convicted of raping two white women in Alabama. The Scottsboro trials were widely covered in the news both locally and nationally; Lee was about five years old when they began, close in age to her young protagonist at the start of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lee studied law at the University of Alabama (spending a summer in England as an exchange student at the University of Oxford), but she left for New York City without earning a degree. In New York she worked as an airline reservationist but soon received financial aid from friends that allowed her to write full-time. With the help of an editor, she transformed a series of short stories into To Kill a Mockingbird.

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Publishing To Kill a Mockingbird

The novel is told predominantly from the perspective of a young girl, Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch (who ages from six to nine years old during the course of the novel), the daughter of white lawyer Atticus Finch, and occasionally from the retrospective adult voice of Jean Louise. Scout and her brother, Jem, learn the principles of racial justice and open-mindedness from their father, whose just and compassionate acts include an unpopular defense of a Black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman. They also develop the courage and the strength to follow their convictions in their acquaintance and eventual friendship with a recluse, “Boo” Radley, who has been demonized by the community.

To Kill a Mockingbird was published during the civil rights movement, as Americans were confronting their country’s legacy of slavery and its laws regarding racial segregation. The book’s themes resonated with readers who were beginning to question the racism and injustice ingrained in American society. Many years later, Lee recounted her views of the movement in a letter to JoBeth McDaniel, a friend and fellow writer and Southerner:

Many Christians were challenged for the first time to be Christians. What was heart-breaking was to discover that people you loved—friends, relatives, neighbors—whom you assumed were civilized, harbored the most vicious feelings.

The novel received a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Criticism of its tendency to sermonize has been matched by praise of its insight and stylistic effectiveness. It became a memorable film in 1962, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus and Robert Duvall as “Boo” Radley. A Broadway play, adapted by Aaron Sorkin, appeared in 2018.

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Friendship with Truman Capote

One character from the novel, Charles Baker (“Dill”) Harris, is based on Lee’s childhood friend and next-door neighbor in Monroeville, Alabama, Truman Capote. When Capote traveled to Kansas in 1959 to cover the murders of the Clutter family for The New Yorker, Lee accompanied him as what he called his “assistant researchist.” She spent months with Capote interviewing townspeople, writing voluminous notes, sharing impressions, and later returning to Kansas for the trial of the accused—contributions Capote would later use in the composition of In Cold Blood (1966).

After the phenomenal success that followed the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, some suspected that Capote was the actual author of Lee’s work. The rumor was proven wrong in 2006 when a 1959 letter from Capote to his aunt was found, stating that he had read and liked the draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that Lee had shown him but making no mention of any role in writing it.

The friendship between Lee and Capote eventually grew strained. In letters to JoBeth McDaniel, Lee commented on Capote’s habit of becoming intensely jealous of others’ successes and possessions. Nevertheless, in 1976 she agreed to join Capote in an interview with People magazine for a profile of him. The two old friends discussed their childhoods, and Lee said of their relationship, “We are bound by a common anguish.”

A return to privacy and the long-awaited Go Set a Watchman

Notwithstanding her joint interview with Capote and People, Lee eschewed publicity and rarely granted requests for lectures, appearances, and interviews. According to some of her friends, in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird she struggled with the pressures of fame and scrutiny of her work, which affected her ability to continue with her craft.

After a few years in New York, she divided her time between that city and her hometown, eventually settling back in Monroeville. She wrote a few short essays, including “Romance and High Adventure” (1983), devoted to Alabama history. Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.

The highly anticipated Go Set a Watchman, written before To Kill a Mockingbird but essentially a sequel, was released in 2015. It features Scout as a grown woman who returns to her childhood home in Alabama to visit her father. This time, Atticus is presented in a less noble light, as Scout realizes her father is far from perfect and in fact holds racist views.

Lee died in 2016 at age 89. In 2025 The Land of Sweet Forever, a collection of her short stories and essays, was posthumously published.