To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1960 Southern Gothic novel by American author Harper Lee. It became instantly successful after its release and won the Pulitzer Prize a year later, becoming a classic of modern American literature. The novel is widely read in high schools and middle schools in the United States and is renowned for its warmth and humor despite dealing with serious issues of rape and racial inequality.

The plot and characters draw loosely from Lee’s own childhood observations of her family, neighbors, and an event near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was ten. The story is told by young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, who lives with her brother Jem and their widowed father, Atticus, a lawyer, during the Great Depression in the fictional town of Maycomb. The children befriend a summer visitor, Dill, and become fascinated by the reclusive neighbor, Boo Radley. Atticus Finch has become a moral hero for many readers and a model of integrity for lawyers. Historian Joseph Crespino called the novel the most widely read book on race in twentieth-century America and its protagonist the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism. As a Bildungsroman, its primary themes involve racial injustice and the loss of innocence, while also addressing class, courage, compassion, and gender roles in the Deep South. Despite its lessons of tolerance, the book has faced removal campaigns from classrooms due to its racial epithets. In 2006, British librarians ranked it ahead of the Bible as a book every adult should read. Reaction varied widely upon publication, and literary analysis remains sparse, though author Mary McDonough Murphy termed it “an astonishing phenomenon.” It was adapted into an Oscar-winning 1962 film and, since 1990, a play performed annually in Lee’s hometown. Lee, who had studied law and written for campus literary magazines, moved to New York and worked as a reservation clerk before an editor at J. B. Lippincott bought her manuscript. After a two-and-a-half-year revision process led by editor Tay Hohoff, the book was published on July 11, 1960. It was Lee’s only published book until the earlier draft *Go Set a Watchman* appeared in 2015.