To Kill a Mockingbird

harper lee

Harper Lee's classic novel of a lawyer in the Deep South defending a black man charged with the rape of a white girl.
One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize, has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. Most recently, librarians across the country gave the book the highest of honors by voting it the best novel of the twentieth century.

Genres historical fictionschoolliteratureyoung adulthistoricalread for schoolnovelsbook clubhigh schoolcoming of age

284 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 11,1960

Series

To Kill a Mockingbird

Literary awards

pulitzer prize, audie award, the quill award, national book award finalist, alabama author award,

Places

maycomb alabama, alabama, the united states of america,

This edition

Format: 284 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published: January 1, 1960 by Heinemann
ISBN: 9780445083769
ASIN: 044508376X
Language: English

Characters More characters

Scout Finch

Jean Louise "Scout" Finch is the narrator and protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel is written from the point of view of an adult Scout describing how she viewed the events of the novel as a child, and she often comments about how she didn...
Atticus Finch

In "To Kill a Mockingbird," Atticus is the father of Scout and Jem. His wife had passed away a few years earlier. He is a lawyer who is asked by the court to defend Tom Robinson, a black man, on a rape charge; he accepts the challenge knowing the social c...
Jem Finch

Jeremy Atticus "Jem" Finch is Atticus son and Scouts older brother by four years. Jem matures greatly throughout the course of the novel and is much more affected by events (his mothers death before the novel begins, the racism in the to...
Arthur Radley

Aka: Boo Radley. He lives near the Finch household. He is a recluse who has never been seen by Scout and Jem. They tease and challenge him early in the story, yet his affection for the children becomes apparent....
Mayella Ewell

Mayella is the 19 year-old daughter of Bob Ewall. Living in poverty and without friends, she tries to seduce Tom Robinson and her father goes to the police claiming rape....
Alexandra Hancock

She is Scout and Jems aunt; Atticus is Alexandras brother. She comes to live with the Finch family in Maycomb to assist with the children when Atticus is involved with the trial. She has difficulty adjusting to the tom boy in Scout.mor...

About the author

harper lee

Nelle Harper Lee was an American novelist whose 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and became a classic of modern American literature. She assisted her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). Her second and final novel, Go Set a Watchman, was an earlier draft of Mockingbird, set at a later date, that was published in July 2015 as a sequel.
The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbors in Monroeville, Alabama, as well as a childhood event that occurred near her hometown in 1936. The novel deals with racist attitudes, the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children.
Lee received numerous accolades and honorary degrees, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, which was awarded for her contribution to literature.