Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama in 1926. She attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama for a year and transferred to the University of Alabama to study law. She did not complete her law degree. After college, she moved to New York City and worked as an airline reservation clerk until 1958. She worked on what would later become To Kill a Mockingbird during her time in New York and in 1957 she submitted a manuscript to the J. B. Lippincott Company.
Told that the manuscript read more like a series of short stories, Lee worked with an editor for the next two years on the book. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and was an immediate hit. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. To Kill a Mockingbird was made into a film in 1962. The film received three Academy Awards including a Best Actor Oscar for Gregory Peck for his portrayal of Atticus Finch. In 2003 The American Film Institute named Atticus Finch as the greatest movie hero of the 20th Century.
Lee has written little since To Kill a Mockingbird and has granted few interviews.
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Websites
Big Read NH
See what is going on across the state!
NEA Big Read
Biography of the author as well as resources for the novel from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Mr. Lettiere's English on the Web
9th grade English teacher Mr. Lettiere of Argo Community High School in Summit, Illinois has identified and created a number of resources for teaching To Kill a Mockingbird in the classroom. He identifies websites, poems, songs, and more that can be used with the novel.
NPR
Story about the author's 2007 appearance at an awards ceremony for winners of a high school essay contest on To Kill a Mockingbird.
'Mockingbird' Sparks Controversy
Story on NPR from 2001 about controversy surrounds the novel and its removal from the required reading list at Muskogee High School in Oklahoma.
In Search of the Novel
Discover creative strategies for effectively teaching novels to middle and high school students with this eight-part workshop series. The series, which covers 10 novels including Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Each program weaves together a variety of elements, including examples of teacher/student classroom activities; interviews with contemporary novelists, literary critics, teachers, and students; and film clips from adaptations of novels. Other featured novels include: A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines; Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson; Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko; Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes; Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; Great Expectations by Charles Dickens; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling; Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison; and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
To Kill a Mockingbird Audio Documentary
This audio only documentary from the National Endowment for the Arts features well-known writers, actors, and critics and an in-depth look at the novel.
AFI 10 Top 10
You can view the trailer for the movie along with comments on the film from James Woods, Nathan Lane and other actors.
Lesson Plans
To Kill a Mockingbird:
A Historical Perspective
In this unit from the Library of Congress, students use primary source materials to learn more about the Depression Era in the 1930s with a focus on the South and the African American experience.
Spend the Day in My Shoes: Exploring the Role of Perspective in Narrative
This lesson plan from ReadWriteThink uses the quote " "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" as a springboard to a writing activity.
To Kill a Mockingbird: Student Survival Guide
This site for students from Nancy Louise Rutherford, a teacher at Belmont High School in Los Angeles includes a chapter-by-chapter guide for students.
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