Birth of Harper Lee

Harper Lee was born on 28 April 1926 in Monroeville. An American novelist, Lee is the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Set in a small Alabama town in the 1930s, it is narrated by a young girl, Scout Finch, whose father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, defends a Black man falsely accused of rape. The book became a classic of American literature, widely taught in schools, and was adapted into an acclaimed film. She grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, a childhood friend of Truman Capote. She published no other novel for decades, until Go Set a Watchman appeared in 2015.

Open on the timeline