Lindsey Graham

But with nothing to distract her, Lee was able to quicken the pace of her work.

She'd spent seven years in New York with little to show for them, but in just two months, by the end of February 1957, she'd drafted a novel.

The 250-page manuscript she turned into her agent described a young woman named Jean Louise who returned to Alabama after spending some time living in New York.

Her father, Atticus, was a lawyer, just like Lise, and the story was centered on issues of race and racism in a small southern town, which bore a distinct resemblance to her hometown of Monroeville.

After reading it, Lee's agent sent along that manuscript to a respected publishing house called J.B.

Lippincott, where it landed on the desk of Tay Hohoff, one of the company's few senior woman editors.

Hohoff saw potential in the draft, and in the summer of 1957, she brought Lee in for a meeting.

Hohoff told Lee that the draft needed work, but it had promise.

Lee spent another few months revising on her own, and by October, the editors at J.B.

Lippincott were sold.

They signed a deal with Lee and gave her a few thousand dollars advance to get the manuscript into publishing shape.

Hohoff and Lee then spent the next six months working through revisions together.

It was a slow and painstaking process.

Later, Lee recalled getting so frustrated one night that she threw the pages she'd been working on out the window.

But after Hohoff scolded her over the phone, Lee ran out into the cold and collected the discarded pages from the dirty New York snow.

In their revision process, Lee and Hohoff decided the story needed a new perspective.

They framed their revised draft through Jean Louise's eyes and set it in the Great Depression, when she was still a child who went by the nickname Scout.

To populate Scout's hometown, Lee pulled from characters she herself had known during her childhood.

There was the mysterious neighbor down the street, Boo Radley, whom the kids tried to coax out of his home.

A loving black housekeeper, Calpurnia, who cared for Scout and her brother.