Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

It is the birthday of novelist Harper Lee (1926), whose novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) won the Pulitzer Prize. It was an immediate bestseller and brought Lee attention in literary circles and in her home state of Alabama. It is considered a modern classic in American literature, and more than 30 million copies have been sold. It is her only published book. The book deals with racial prejudice in a small Southern town and is told through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl, Scout Finch. It is based on Lee's childhood in Monroeville, Alabama (where she still lives), and includes the themes of loss of innocence, gender roles, compassion, class and courage. She was a voracious reader as a child, mainly because there wasn't much else to do for a youngster in her small town during the Depression. She once wrote, "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books." Lee and Truman Capote were childhood friends, and a character in To Kill a Mockingbird is based on him. As adults, Lee assisted Capote in research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). Lee received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.