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person1926–2016

Harper Lee

Disciplines:
fiction
american history/america
civil rights
usa/alabama

Summary

American novelist — author of To Kill a Mockingbird — Pulitzer Prize 1961 — who published one novel (plus Go Set a Watchman) and created the most widely read American novel about racial injustice.

Core Contribution

Creates To Kill a Mockingbird as the moral touchstone for American racial justice — the novel's combination of childhood perspective, Atticus Finch as the idealized moral lawyer, and direct account of racial injustice in the American South made it the most widely read and assigned novel in American education.

Notable Works & Achievements

To Kill a Mockingbird

Go Set a Watchman

Historical Influences

Truman Capote Her own Monroeville childhood American South Gothic tradition

Intellectual Lineage

Monroeville, AlabamaHuntingdon CollegeUniversity of Alabama Law SchoolNew York To Kill a Mockingbird Recluse

Contemporaries & Peers

Truman Capote Flannery O'Connor

Minds Influenced

American civil rights fictionLegal drama genre

Intellectual Posterity

To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus Finch Pulitzer Prize Go Set a Watchman

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Harper Lee

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