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Research on Harper Lee by Adeline Ng (08)Born: 28-Apr-1926
Birthplace: Monroeville, AL
Gender: Female
Religion: Methodist
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Novelist
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: To Kill A Mockingbird
Early life
Harper Lee, known as Nelle, was born in the Alabama town of Monroeville on April 28, 1926, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938.
As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote
After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50), pledging the Chi Omega sorority. While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, Ramma-Jamma. Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.
Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father.
NOVEL : TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
What resulted was To Kill A Mockingbird, published in 1960 and now widely acclaimed as one of the best American novels.After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50), pledging the Chi Omega sorority. While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, Ramma-Jamma. Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.
Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father.
NOVEL : TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
It spans three years in the childhood of Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, a young Alabama girl, and her older brother Jem, while their widowed father, small-time attorney Atticus Finch, defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Deftly sewing these threads into a story larger than its small-town characters and setting, the book spent eighty weeks on the best-seller list, sold 30,000,000 copies, and has been translated into more than forty languages.
It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and was adapted into a film in 1962, starring Gregory Peck.
SUMMARY OF HER PAST SCHOOLS AND FAMILY
In her last interview, in 1964, Lee said she had "never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird", and that she was having a difficult time writing her next novel.She wrote a few magazine essays after Mockingbird was published, but another novel has never yet appeared under her byline. Now in her 80s, Lee lives with her sister Louise, eschews all publicity, declines all interview requests, and rarely makes public appearances.
Father: Amasa Coleman Lee (lawyer, b. 19-Jul-1880, d. 1962)
Mother: Frances Cunningham (Finch) Lee (d. 1951)
Sister: Alice Lee (attorney, b. 11-Sep-1911)
Sister: Louise Lee (lives with Harper Lee)
Brother: Edwin Coleman Lee (US Air Force officer, b. 1920, d. 1951 cerebral hemorrhage)
High School: Monroe County High School, Monroe County, AL
University: Huntingdon College, Montgomery, AL (1944-5)
Law School: University of Alabama (1945-9)
University: Oxford University (one year)
Links:
http://www.nndb.com/people/572/000025497/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee
http://books.google.com.sg/books?