Harper Lee

Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama. Her father was a lawyer who once defended two Black men accused of murder. Truman Capote was her childhood neighbor and friend. She studied law at the University of Alabama but left before she finished. In 1949 she moved to New York and worked as an airline reservation clerk. In 1956 friends gave her a year's wages as a gift so she could write full time.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) is told by Scout Finch, a girl whose father, Atticus, defends a Black man falsely accused of rape in 1930s Alabama. The book argues that you understand people only when you see things from their side, and that courage means doing right when you know you will lose. It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize. Some critics now say it makes a white man the hero of a story about racism.

Lee also helped Capote research In Cold Blood. She published no other novel for 55 years. Go Set a Watchman, an early draft of Mockingbird, appeared in 2015. She died in Monroeville in 2016, aged 89.