Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist best known for her 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Lee has received numerous accolades and honorary degrees, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 which was awarded for her contribution to literature. She assisted her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). Capote was the basis for the character Dill Harris in To Kill a Mockingbird.
The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936 when she was 10. The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children. It was inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Go Set a Watchman, written in the mid 1950s, was published in July 2015 as a sequel to Mockingbird but was later confirmed to be an earlier draft of Mockingbird.
Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, the youngest of four children of Frances Cunningham (née Finch) and Amasa Coleman Lee. Her parents chose her middle name, Harper, to honor pediatrician Dr. William W. Harper, of Selma, who had saved the life of her sister Louise. Her first name, Nelle, was her grandmother's name spelled backwards and the name she used, whereas Harper Lee was primarily her pen name. Lee's mother was a homemaker; her father was a former newspaper editor, businessman, and lawyer, who also served in the Alabama State Legislature from 1926 to 1938. Through her father, she was related to Confederate General Robert E. Lee and a member of the prominent Lee family. Before A.C. Lee became a title lawyer, he once defended two black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Both clients, a father and son, were hanged.

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