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Harper Lee Biography Essay

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The Life of Harper Lee Harper Lee was an American author made famous by her Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28th, 1926. She was the youngest of four children. Her father was a well-respected lawyer, part-owner of the local newspaper, and actively involved in Alabama state legislature. Her mother suffered from mental illness, what we now believe was likely bipolar disorder. Lee’s interest in writing was first piqued in high school, when she began to develop a love and appreciation for English literature. Upon graduating high school, she attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, an all female school. Harper Lee was always a tomboy and thus felt out of place amongst the girls at Huntingdon who were focused on dating and clothes while she strived to do her best in her classes. This led her to transfer to …show more content…

She worked odd jobs for a few years until one day she was reunited with her childhood friend Truman Capote, who was becoming increasingly will known for his own writing. Capote was able to find Lee an agent, and her new friend Michael Martin Brown, a famous Broadway composer, supported her financially for a full year while she worked full time on her current novel; what would become the famous To Kill a Mockingbird. When asked about To Kill a Mockingbird at a 1960s interview Lee said “Naturally, you don't sit down in white hot inspiration and write with a burning flame in front of you. But since I knew I could never be happy being anything but a writer, and Mockingbird put itself together for me so accommodatingly, I kept at it because I knew it had to be my first novel, for better or for worse.” A true American classic, To Kill a Mockingbird won a Pulitzer Prize and was also turned into an Academy Award winning movie in 1963. Lee kept writing throughout her life and her next published work was Go Set a Watchman, in

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To Kill A Mockingbird is an book that has been published by Harper Lee. It has became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. Something that Harper Lee always considered was for her story to be a simple love story. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior to innocence and experience,kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. This is mostly talking more about the book.

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Harper Lee and Truman Capote first met in 1928. Neglected by his parents, Capote spent most of his childhood in Monroeville with his aunts, who were neighbors with the Lees. Despite their opposite personalities, the two became friends. Capote, a sensitive child who wore “fancy clothes” was picked on by other boys. Lee, on the other hand, was a tomboy that was “tougher than many of the boys” (“Harper Lee Biography”).

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Lee's father was a southern lawyer, like Atticus. Lee never liked to play with dolls or anything girly. She was just like Scout and liked to do boy things. The authors purpose is to connect her life with the Scottsboro Trial but most importantly to show innocence and how Jem and Scout lose it as they get older. She is trying to perceive innocence because Scout and Jem are young and had to deal with their father that wasn't home and always had to deal with Tom's case.

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“Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world (Sylvia Plath). The book To Kill Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an award winning book written in 1960 Maycomb Alabama. The book is narrated by a girl named Scout. She tells the story about how her brother Jem broke his arm and all the events leading up to it. It starts with a boy named Dill coming to visit for the summer and him and Jem started picking on the Radley house to try and see a boy named Boo Radley who had supposedly been locked in the house for years.

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The time period of the 1930s included The Great Depression, Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights Coalition, leaving hardships and crime in their wake. Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird that was published on July 11, 1960, gives the readers an insight of what it was like for her growing up in a small southern town in the 1930s. The events she witnessed growing up as a lawyer’s daughter during this time had significant influence for the best-selling novel To Kill a Mockingbird that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and became an Academy Award winning film in 1962. To Kill a Mockingbird has a strong theme of believing the good in everyone, no matter the circumstances. Harper Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a lawyer.

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Truman Capote was one of Harper Lee’s closest childhood friends. She stepped up to serve as his protector (“Early” 1). Harper Lee’s novel to kill a mockingbird was her first novel. Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926 (“Harper” 1. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a lawyer, a member of the Alabama state legislature (“Harper” 1).

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Harper Lee is a friendly and outgoing person. Harper Lee began writing To Kill A Mockingbird in 1960. This story took place in 1936 when harper lee was younger living out her childhood in Monroeville, Alabama. This book explains to us the roots and consequences of racism that occurred in the book and how good and evil can happen to a town or an individual. In her novel, To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee uses Tom Robinson, Atticus, and Jem to show that good and evil can happen in a person and a town.

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Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, wrote the book in 1960’s while the events in the book take place in the early 1930’s. During the 1930’s, the Great Depression just hit the United States, the unemployment rate grew and many families lived in poverty. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee describes the childhood of Scout, also known as Jean Louise Finch, and her older brother Jem which is short for Jeremy Atticus Finch. The Finches were fairly wealthy compared to the rest of the residents of Maycomb County, Alabama, which is due to Scout and Jem’s father, Atticus Finch, being a lawyer. Throughout the beginning of the novel, Harper Lee uses symbols to foreshadow the loss of innocence leading up to Atticus’ big trial with Tom Robinson and Mayella Ewell.

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811 Words | 4 Pages

“As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal,” said Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird. The novel To Kill A Mockingbird tells a story of a Family in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s. Lee writes an informative, emotional story explaining life in the early 30’s during The Great Depression. In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee explores concept of moral courage, and in Atticus, gives the model of a perfect human being, a Christ-like man of courage, integrity, and compassion.

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Those decades shared a major subject, inequality. Harper Lee decided to acknowledge the inequality in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird. She wrote the story with setting in the 1930s but opinions from the 1960s. Raised in a town that held tight to their 1930s opinions during the 1960s, she decided to write what she knew. She showed the inequality in problems such as economy, race, and women.

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842 Words | 4 Pages

From his rearing and all the way to his rise fame, Capote injected his personal thoughts and feelings into his work. His mother most likely had a great influence on his attitude, as well as the environment that he was reared in. Being raised in a broken home, Capote most likely felt alone and neglected and very lonesome through much of his life. Capote developed a hardy friendship with a girl, who would eventually become a world-famous writer, "His closest friends at this time were an elderly cousin, Miss Sook Faulk, and a neighboring tomboy, Harper Lee (1926–). She later became an award-winning author herself, writing To Kill a Mockingbird.

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595 Words | 3 Pages

You’re not born with prejudice; you’re taught it. Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was written about the late 1930’s, and showed the perspective of a little girl, Scout, while her father defends a black man in court. The South in 1926 was a place of racial prejudice, with discrimination and inequality. Growing up in the South nearly her entire life, Harper Lee was exposed to the racist prejudice against African-Americans. Harper Lee was born on April 28th, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama.

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The Life of Ted Bundy If a person lived in the 1960s and ‘70s, he or she has heard of Ted Bundy. His murders and twisted ways of killing make it difficult for anyone to forget him. He was ruthless, sneaky, and exceedingly smart.

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2001 Words | 9 Pages

Harper lee’s first name was in fact Nelle, Harper is her middle name and she had chosen this in order that people do not mistaken it for Nellie. Nelle was always the friendly type but to a very certain extent, She was not really the type of person to share her life story to random people besides her very close friends. If you were

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218 Words | 1 Pages

In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, there are many similarities between the narrator, Scout, and the author, Harper Lee. For instance, both grew up in the time of the great depression with little money to do extra things; therefore, they relied on their imaginations to entertain them for hours (Haggerty) . Comparatively, both were tomboys in their youths and grew up in small towns where girls were expected to wear dresses and act like a lady. Also, both Harper Lee and Scout both grew up with their fathers being lawyers for their town and would often hear of cases that they worked on (“Harper Lee”) . Similarly, when writing her book a “mad dog warning” was released, no doubt giving the idea for the episode of the mad dog Tim Robinson.

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