Harper, of Selma, who saved the life of her sister Louise. Her parents chose her middle name, Harper, to honor pediatrician Dr. Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama where she grew up as the youngest of four children of Frances Cunningham (née Finch) and Amasa Coleman Lee. 2.2 Autobiographical details in the novel.
She also wrote the novel Go Set a Watchman in the mid-1950s and published it in July 2015 as a sequel to Mockingbird, but it was later confirmed to be her first draft of Mockingbird. It was inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children. The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936 when she was 10. Capote was the basis for the character Dill Harris in To Kill a Mockingbird. She assisted her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). Lee has received numerous accolades and honorary degrees, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 which was awarded for her contribution to literature. It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist best known for her 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird.