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Shop | A to Z Index "Nelle" Harper Lee was born on April 28,
1926, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and
Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. She grew up in Monroeville, a
small town in southwest Alabama. Her father was a lawyer who
also served in the state legislature from 1926 -1938. As a
child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader. After finishing
public school in Monroeville, she attended Huntington College, a
private school for women in Montgomery, for a year and then
transferred to the University of Alabama to study law but
withdrew six months before graduation. She moved to New York in
1949 and worked as a reservations clerk for Eastern Air Lines
and British Overseas Airways. While in New York, she wrote
several essays and short stories but none were published. Her
agent encouraged her to develop one short