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Nelle Harper

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Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, to Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Harper Lee grew up in the small southwestern Alabama town of Monroeville. Her father,was a lawyer who also served on the state legislature. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader.
In 1944, at the age of 18, Harper Lee enrolled in Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. From 1945 to 1949 she studied law at the University of Alabama. She transferred to Oxford University in England as an exchange student for a year, but six months before completing her studies, Lee decided to move to New York and worked as a reservation clerk for Eastern Airlines until the late 1950s, when she decided to devote herself to writing.
Lee published her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, in 1960 after a two year period of revising and rewriting under the guidance of her editor, Tay Hohoff, of the J. B. Lippincott Company. To Kill a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize despite mixed critical reviews. The novel was highly popular, selling more than fifteen million copies. The book was even made into a successful movie in 1962. She wrote a few magazine articles after To Kill A Mockingbird was published, but never another novel. President Johnson named Lee to the National Council of Arts in June 1966, and since then she has received numerous honorary doctorates. Now in her 80s, Lee lives with her sister, Louise and prefers a more private life declining all publicity , interview requests, and rarely makes public appearances.

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