Lee, Harper (1926-2016), was an American author. She became famous with her novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
The plot centers on Atticus Finch, a small-town lawyer in Alabama who defends a young Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The story is told by the lawyer’s young daughter. The appeal of the novel lies in the author’s ability to weave together the eccentric characters of a small town, the observations of a sensitive child, and a plea for justice.
During the mid-1950’s, Lee had written a novel that took place 20 years after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird. The book centered on Finch’s daughter, now an adult, returning to the small Alabama town where she was raised. The unpublished manuscript was forgotten until Lee’s lawyer rediscovered it in 2014. The book was published in 2015 as Go Set a Watchman.
Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. She grew up in the state and attended the University of Alabama. Lee died on Feb. 19, 2016.
