Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. The youngest child of Amasa C. and Frances Finch Lee, she attended public school in Monroeville before entering the University of Alabama to study law. After spending a year as an exchange student at Oxford University in England, Lee returned to school in Alabama but left in 1950 without completing her degree. She moved to New York City, where she worked as an airline reservation clerk and also wrote essays and short stories; at the urging of a literary agent, she soon quit her job to write full-time. Although Lee submitted a draft of To Kill a Mockingbird to a publisher as early as 1957, she worked on revisions of the story until its publication in 1960. In 1961 the novel received a Pulitzer Prize, and it was also awarded the Alabama Library Association award (1961), the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1961), and the Bestsellers’ paperback of the year award (1962).
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