Harper Lee

Harper Lee is an American novelist and essayist. Her 1960 Pulitzer Prize—winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird is her only major work to date. The book is a literary classic, inspired a 1962 Academy Award-winning film adaptation starring Gregory Peck, and is required reading for high-school students.

Lee attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama from 1944 - 1945 before studying law at the University of Alabama. She also studied for a summer at Oxford University before returning to the United States to work as an airline reservations clerk for Eastern Air Lines.

Lee wrote several short stories and acquired an agent in 1956. Late that year, two friends gave her the gift of one year's wages and her pledge that she would spend that year writing. The result was To Kill a Mockingbird.

The book was published in 1960 and was an immediate critical and commercial success. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was voted the best novel of the 20th century by Library Journal. To date, To Kill a Mockingbird has sold thirty million copies.

1. "Love purifies. Suffering never purified anybody; suffering merely intensifies the self-directed drives within us. Any act of love, however—no matter how small—lessens anxiety's grip, gives us a taste of tomorrow, and eases the yoke of our fears." - Harper Lee, "Love—In Other Words," Vogue, 15 April 1961
2. "Wordsworth was right when he said that we trail clouds of glory as we come into the world, that we are born with a divine sense of perception. As we grow older, the world closes in on us, and we gradually lose the freshness of viewpoint that we had as children. That is why I think children should get to know this country while they are young." - Harper Lee, "When Children Discover America," McCall's, August 1965
3. "All in all, Scout Finch is fiction's most appealing child since Carson McCullers' Frankie got left behind at the wedding." - Time Magazine, 1 August 1960

• April 28, 1926: Born

• 1957: Submits manuscript for To Kill A Mockingbird

• 1960: To Kill A Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott Company.

• 1961: Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel

• 1962: Film version of To Kill A Mockingbird released on Christmas Day

• 1963: Accompanies childhood friend Truman Capote's to Kansas to help research In Cold Blood

• 1999: Library Journal votes To Kill A Mockingbird the best novel of the twentieth century.

• 2006: Writes a letter to Oprah that was published in Oprah's O Magazine

• 2006: Accepted honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame

• November 5, 2007: President George W. Bush presents Harper Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• July 11, 1960: To Kill A Mockingbird published