All Harper Lee wanted was to be 'the Jane Austen of South Alabama' — here's how she accomplished that and so much more

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In 1964, just four years after publishing "To Kill A Mockingbird," Harper Lee, who died Friday at the age of 89, granted radio host Roy Newquist a rare and personal interview.

"Well, my objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me," she told Newquist.

"I would like, however, to do one thing, and I've never spoken much about it because it's such a personal thing," she continued. "I would like to leave some record of the kind of life that existed in a very small world. I hope ... to chronicle something that seems to be very quickly going down the drain. This is small-town middle-class southern life..."

Lee went on to describe the South as thousands of tiny towns full of rich social pattern. "I would simply like to put down all I know about this because I believe that there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing," she said. "In other words all I want to be is the Jane Austen of South Alabama."

With "To Kill A Mockingbird," Lee accomplished her goal.

In it's first week, it sold 1.1 million copies, and in its lifetime sold more than 40 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages. Just a year after publishing, "To Kill A Mockingbird," won a Pulitzer prize, and a year later earned Gregory Peck "Best Actor" award at the 1962 Academy Awards for the role as Atticus Finch in the film adaptation.

The world had come to intimately know some of the people and behaviors of small-town southern life, and what's more, they learned valuable lessons about humanity along the way. Here's how Lee became more than "the Jane Austen of South Alabama."

Lee grew up in Monroeville, a small town in Alabama.

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Born in 1926, Lee believed growing up in the Deep South during the Great Depression had a huge influence on her writing style.

"I think we are a region of natural storytellers, just from tribal instinct," Lee told Newquist. "We did not have the pleasure of the theater, the dance, of motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertained each other by talking."

 Lee said that her childhood was one without much money, toys, or movie-going — she and her friends had to entertain themselves by living in their imaginations most of the time. 

"I think that kind of life naturally produces more writers than, say, an environment like 82nd Street in New York," Lee said. "In small town life and in rural life you know your neighbors. Not only do you know everything about your neighbors, but you know everything about them from the time they came to the country."

She didn't believe in studying to become a writer.

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Lee went on to study law in college, but dropped out of Law School at the University of Alabama six months before completing her studies to become a writer in New York. 

"Another way they fool themselves is when they study to be writers," Lee said of aspiring creative writers. "They are training themselves, in colleges, to be writers. Well, my dear young people, writing is something you'll never learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there."

If it weren't for a generous gift, she may never have had the time to write 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'

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After moving to New York in 1949, Lee worked as a ticket agent for British Overseas Airways Corporation while pursuing her writing career. 

In 1956, after lamenting that she was having trouble balancing her job and finding time to write to her friends Michael and Joy Brown, they gave Lee an entire year's salary so she could take time to write whatever she wanted as a Christmas present.

She used this time to work on a manuscript that eventually became "To Kill a Mockingbird."

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