Harper Lee and To Kill a Mocking Bird Early Life Born in Monroeville, Alabama, on April 28, 1926, Nelle Harper Lee was the youngest of three children. Amassed. Coleman Lee and Francis Lee. Before his death, Miss Lee's father and her older sister, Alice, practiced law together in Monroeville. When considering the theme of honor that runs through Miss Lee's novel, it is perhaps significant to note that her family is connected to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, a man particularly known for his dedication to this virtue. Miss Lee received her early education in the public schools of Monroeville. Following this, she entered the University of Alabama to study law. She leaves there to spend a year in England as part of a student exchange. Returning to university, she continued her studies, but left in 1950 without having satisfied the requirements for her law degree. She moved to New York and worked as an airline reservations clerk. Character Miss Lee is said to personally resemble the tomboy she portrays in the character Scout. Her dark, straight hair is worn cut short. Her main interests, she says, are “collecting memoirs of 19th-century clergy, golf, crime and music.” She is a Whig in political thought and believes in "Catholic Emancipation and the Repeal of the Corn Laws." Sources for To Kill A Mockingbird Among the sources for Miss Lee's novel are the following: (1) National Events: This novel focuses on the role of the Negro in Southern life, a life with which Miss Lee was intimately associated. Although it does not deal with civil rights as such - for example the right to vote - it is greatly interested in the problem of human dignity - a dignity based on individual merit and not on racial origin. The intolerance of the characters in this novel is very similar to that of modern-day Southerners, where the fictional Maycomb County is located. (2) Specific people: Atticus Finch is the main character of this novel. He looks a lot like Harper Lee's father, whose middle name was Finch. In addition to both being lawyers, they have a similar character and personality: humble, intelligent and hardworking. (3) Personal Experience: Boo Radley's house exudes an aura of fantasy, superstition, and curiosity for the Finch children. There was a similar house in Harper Lee's childhood. Additionally, Miss Lee grew up amid prejudice and violence against black people in Alabama. Additionally, she studied law and visited her father's law offices as a child, just as Scout visits Atticus's office and briefly considers a career as a lawyer. Writing Career Harper Lee began developing an interest in writing at the age of seven. His law studies proved to be good training for a career as a writer: it fostered logical thinking, and legal matters were an excellent source of story ideas. After arriving in New York, she contacted a literary agent with a manuscript of two essays and three short stories. Miss Lee followed his suggestion to develop one of the stories into a novel. This eventually became To Kill A Mockingbird. After the success of her first novel, Miss Lee returned to Monroeville to begin work on a second. She quickly realized that privacy was not one of the prices of being a successful novelist. “These Southern people are Southern people,” she said, “and if they know you're working at home, they don't hesitate to come over for coffee.” Miss Lee also said that her second novel would be about the South, because she believes that her part of the country is "the haven of true eccentrics." Miss Lee considers herself.