To Kill a Mockingbird

Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926. She studied law at the University of Alabama from 1945 to 1949, and spent a year as an exchange student in Oxford University, Wellington Square. She moved to New York where she worked as an airlines reservations clerk while pursuing a literary career. In 1959, she accompanied Truman Capote to Holcombe, Kansas, as a research assistant for Capote's novel In Cold Blood. Her first book, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. The book was adapted as a feature film in 1962 and a London stage play in 1987. Her second book, Go Set a Watchman, was published in 2015. She died on February 19, 2016 at the age of 89.