The novel covers a two-year period, beginning when Scout is six and ending when she is eight. Scout opens the novel as a grown woman reflecting back on key events in her childhood. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird depicts the life of its young narrator, Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the mid-1930s. Despite the lack of a follow-up work, Lee's literary reputation remains secure and even has grown since the debut of her remarkable first novel. Since then, aside from a few magazine pieces in the early 1960s, the reclusive author has published nothing, although she has been reported to have been working on a second novel. Lee herself attained considerable celebrity as the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1962. The novel was a dramatic success, earning generally positive reviews and achieving bestseller status. The final draft was finally completed in 1959 and published in 1960. Several more months of revision followed the feedback of her editors, who found the original version more like a string of short stories than a cohesive novel. With the financial support of some friends, she spent several years revising the manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird before submitting it to publishers. After her literary agent suggested that one of her stories might be expanded into a novel, Lee quit her airline job. In the early 1950s, the author worked as an airline reservations clerk in New York City, writing essays and short stories in her spare time. She left school six months short of earning a law degree, however, in order to pursue a writing career. The games young Nelle and her brother played with Capote were likely the inspiration for the adventures Scout and Jem had with Dill, their own "summer" friend.Īfter graduating from the public schools of Monroeville, Lee attended a small college in nearby Montgomery before attending the University of Alabama for four years. Summers in Monroeville were brightened by the visits of young Truman Capote, who stayed with the Lees' next-door neighbors and who later became a famous writer himself. Like Scout, who could be bullied into submission with the remark that she was "gettin' more like a girl," Lee was "a rough 'n' tough tomboy," according to childhood friends. Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926, the youngest of three children of Amasa Coleman Lee, a lawyer who practiced in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama. Author BiographyĪlthough Harper Lee has long maintained that To Kill a Mockingbird is not autobiographical, critics have often remarked upon the striking similarities between the author's own childhood and that of her youthful heroine, Scout Finch. A regional novel dealing with universal themes of tolerance, courage, compassion, and justice, To Kill a Mockingbird combined popular appeal with literary excellence to ensure itself an enduring place in modern American literature. Since then, however, critics have hailed Lee's rendering of a child's perspective-as told by an experienced adult-as one of the most technically proficient in modern fiction. Some early reviewers found Scout's narration unconvincing, its style and language too sophisticated for a young girl.
NEW MOVIE TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD CHARACTERS TRIAL
Lee's story of the events surrounding the trial has been admired for its portrayal of Southern life during the 1930s, not only for its piercing examination of the causes and effects of racism, but because it created a model of tolerance and courage in the character of Atticus Finch. Atticus Finch has taken on the legal defense of a black man who has been falsely charged with raping a white woman. Scout's narrative relates how she and her elder brother Jem learn about fighting prejudice and upholding human dignity through the example of their father. The work was an instant sensation, becoming a best-seller and winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel replays three key years in the life of Scout Finch, the young daughter of an Alabama town's principled lawyer. When To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, it brought its young first-time author, Harper Lee, a startling amount of attention and notoriety.
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