To Kill a Mockingbird is a popular American novel written by Harper Lee. The novel was published in 1960 and won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was Lee’s first published novel.
The novel deals with bigotry and racism in the Southern United States during the 1930’s. The plot centers on Atticus Finch, a white small-town lawyer in Alabama who defends a young Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The story is narrated by the lawyer’s 6-year-old daughter, Jean Louise, nicknamed Scout. During the trial, Scout learns about the hypocrisy and prejudice of the adult world. The novel’s appeal lies in the author’s skill at weaving together the vivid eccentric characters of a small town, the observations of a sensitive child, and a plea for social justice. The 1962 motion-picture adaptation of the novel won three Academy Awards. A stageplay based on the novel opened on Broadway in 2018. In its second full week of performances, it became the highest-grossing American play in Broadway history, grossing more than $1.7 million.
During the mid-1950’s, Lee had written a novel that took place 20 years after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird. The book centered on Scout Finch, now an adult, returning to the small Alabama town where she was raised. The unpublished manuscript was forgotten until Lee’s lawyer rediscovered it in 2014. The book was published in 2015 as Go Set a Watchman.
