Harper Lee
Harper Lee
"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." (Lee, 94)
Just like a mockingbird, one author did one thing that she would forever be recognized for. She wrote one novel that would become a classic for ages and became a novelist that will remain remembered by the masses.
Nelle Harper Lee came into this world on April 28, 1926, to Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Harper Lee grew up in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama. Her father, Frances Lee, was a former newspaper editor and proprietor. Frances Lee also served as a state senator and practiced as a lawyer in Monroeville. Her father would later become the model for the Atticus Finch character in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader. She fought on the playground. She talked back to teachers. She was bored with school and resisted any sort of conformity. In high school Lee was fortunate to have a gifted English teacher, Gladys Watson Burkett, who introduced her to challenging literature and the rigors of writing well. Lee loved 19th-century British authors best, and once said that her ambition was to become "The Jane Austen of South Alabama." She also enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Captoe. Captoe would later provide the inspiration for the character Dill in her novel.
When Lee was five years of age the first trials began in Scottsboro, Alabama regarding the rapes of two white women by nine black men. The defendants, who were nearly killed before being brought to court, were not even provided with a lawyer until the first day of trial. Despite medical testimony that the woman had not been raped, the all white jury found the men guilty of the crime and all but one (a twelve year...
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