To Kill a Mockingbird

Nelle Harper Lee was the youngest of four children born to Amasa Lee and Frances Finch Lee. She earned a law degree from the University of Alabama in 1949 and spent a year in OxfordEnglandbut moved to New York in 1950 to focus on writing. She published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960which became an immediate and immense success—it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 and was voted “Best Novel of the Century” by a Library Journal poll in 1999. After 1960Lee retreated from public life to her hometown of MonroevilleAlabama. Aside from a few essaysshe published nothing else until 2015. At that pointher publisher released Go Set a Watchmanwhich Lee wrote initially as a first draft of Mockingbird. Its publication was controversialas some believed Lee’s publisher took advantage of her old age to release the book (though an investigation by the State of Alabama found no evidence of this). Lee died in her sleep in 2016 at age 89having received numerous honorary degreesthe Presidential Medal of Freedomand the National Medal of Arts.

In 1931nine black teenage boys were accused of rape by two white girls. The trials of the boys lasted six yearswith convictionsreversalsand numerous retrials. These trials were given the name The Scottsboro Trialsmade national headlinesand drastically intensified the debate about race and racism in America. Ultimatelyafter six years of trials in which the boys were kept in jailand despite the fact that one of the girls ultimately changed her testimony and claimed that no rape had actually occurredfive of the nine were convicted of rape. These cases are said to have inspired To Kill a Mockingbirdas Tom Robinson is also a target of a false and racially motivated rape accusation in the novel.

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the fictional town of MaycombAlabama. While it is the story of Scout’s growing upit is also a story of the racially charged atmosphere in the town in the years of the Great Depression. Mockingbird therefore falls into a particular subset of American literature called Southern literaturesince it deals explicitly and implicitly with themes and issues that were uniquely Southern. Other notable works of Southern literature include Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the WindWilliam Faulkner's The Sound and the Furyand Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find. In 2015Lee’s publisher released Go Set a Watchmanwhich was billed as a sequel to Mockingbird but was actually her first draft of Mockingbird. It’s set 20 years after the events of Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird also shares many connections with Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Both novels have a troublemaking child as their protagonist and narratorand both novels chart their protagonists’ growth as their adventures force them to see the unfairness and brutality of their community and of societyparticularly in regard to the racist treatment of black Americans.