Monroeville, Literary Capital of Alabama

This small county seat of fewer than seven thousand people draws tens of thousands of visitors a year, and not for its timber or cotton. Monroeville is the childhood home of two of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, and they grew up as next door friends.

Nelle Harper Lee was born here in nineteen twenty-six. Her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, drawn from the Monroeville of her childhood in the nineteen thirties, won the Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most widely read books in the country. Her playmate next door was Truman Capote, who later wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime classic In Cold Blood. Lee turned him into the character Dill in her novel. In nineteen ninety-seven the Alabama Legislature officially named Monroeville the Literary Capital of Alabama.