Harper Lee was born in 1926 in a small town in the southern state of Alabama. She was a lawyer’s daughter, but she stated several times that To kill a mockingbird is not an autobio-graphical novel. It was written while Ms. Lee was working in New York, in the late fifties, and published in 1960. It became an instant success with both public and critics and won the author the Pulitzer Prize, the most important American literary award. It is still an in-ternational best-seller, with over thirty million copies sold. A successful film based o ....