Nelle Harper Lee was an American author who grew up in the town of Monroeville, Alabama, as the youngest of four siblings. Her mother, Frances Finch, was a housewife and her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a lawyer and former senator. Nelle Harper Lee attended Huntingdon College 1944–45 and read law at the University of Alabama 1945–49. She was also an exchange student in Oxford, England, for a year, but without graduating. She worked for an American airline in New York in the 1950s, but gave up her job to become a writer.