Nelle Harper Lee is internationally known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama in 1926. She studied law at the University of Alabama, but dropped out to move to New York City and pursue her writing. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and experienced immediate success, selling 500,000 copies after its first year in print. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962. 
In To Kill a Mockingbird, siblings Jem and Scout are exposed to racial injustices of the 1930s American South. There are many parallels between Lee’s childhood and that of her narrator, Scout. Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, provided the principal inspiration for Scout&#8217;s father, Atticus, the hero of the novel. Amasa was a lawyer, and had unsuccessfully defended two Black men convicted of murder; To Kill a Mockingbird&#8216;s plot revolves around Atticus&#8217;s defense of Tom Robinson, an Black man accused of the rape of a white woman. Lee also based the character Charles Baker “Dill” Harris on her childhood friend and fellow author Truman Capote. 
Though she is largely remembered for To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee also wrote several essays, including “Romance and High Adventure” (1983). In 2015, a year before Lee&#8217;s death, Go Set a Watchman appeared in stores—originally the draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, Watchman was released as a sequel. It is uncertain that Lee ever intended to publish the book, which released to much controversy. It presents an older, more overtly prejudiced Atticus, a change that shocked many admirers of the character as he appears in To Kill a Mockingbird.