Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist widely known for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on her observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as seen through the eyes of two children. The novel was inspired by the racist attitudes she observed as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Though Lee published only this single book for half a century, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature.
Lee has received numerous honorary degrees, and declined to speak on each occasion. Lee assisted close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). In February 2015, Lee's lawyer released a statement confirming the publication of a second novel, Go Set a Watchman. Written in the mid 1950s, the book was controversially published in July 2015 as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, though it has since been confirmed to be the first draft of the latter. Lee died in her sleep on the morning of February 19, 2016 at the age of 89. Until her death, she lived in Monroeville, Alabama.
