Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. She was the fourth child of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. During high school, Lee developed an interest in English Literature. She graduated in 1944 and studied at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery for a year, then transferred to the University of Alabama and studied law. Later she went on exchange to Oxford University in England. Returning back to continue her law studies, she dropped out after the first semester. In 1949, Lee arrived in New York City. She worked as an airline ticket officer but later received financial aid from Michael Martin Brown and his wife in order to quit her job for a year and work on her writing full time. In 1957, she submitted her …show more content…
There is also evidence that Boo Radley was based on an actual neighbour of Truman Capote, one of Lee's closest childhood friends. The character of Atticus Finch is also largely based off of her father. The novel did extremely well, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and with more than one million copies of the novel sold worldwide annually. The film version of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) was also nominated for eight academy awards that year and won three awards, including best actor for Gregory Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch. To Kill a Mockingbird, was not Lee's only novel, Go Set a Watchman, which was released in 2015, was actually the first novel written by Harper Lee. The novel is about the later lives of the characters, and when she submitted the manuscript, she was asked to rewrite it and make the main character Scout a child. Go Set a Watchman is about Scout as a 26-year-old woman returning home to Maycomb, Alabama from New York City. The novel was controversial, portraying Atticus Finch, a beloved character from To Kill a Mockingbird, as a bigoted