To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. Despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality, the novel is renowned for its warmth and humor. It was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962 by director Robert Mulligan, with a screenplay by Horton Foote.

About To Kill a Mockingbird in brief

Summary To Kill a MockingbirdTo Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. Despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality, the novel is renowned for its warmth and humor. It was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962 by director Robert Mulligan, with a screenplay by Horton Foote. Since 1990, a play based on the novel has been performed annually in Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Lee continued to respond to her work’s impact until her death in February 2016, although she had refused any personal publicity for herself or the novel since 1964. In 2006, British librarians ranked the book ahead of the Bible as one \”every adult should read before they die\”. The book is widely taught in schools in the United States with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. The book was Lee’s only published book until Go Set a Watchman, an earlier draft of To Kill aMockingbird, was published on July 14, 2015. It has been subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms, often challenged for its use of racial epithets. The main character, Atticus Finch, is the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism. As a Southern Gothic and Bildungsroman novel, the primary themes involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. In 1964, Lee recalled her hopes for the book when she said, “I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers at the end of the book” The book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1966.

It is considered one of the most influential works of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee’s observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was ten. In 1950, Lee moved to New York City, where she worked as a reservation clerk for British Overseas Airways Corporation; there, she began writing a collection of essays and short stories. In 1957, Lee presented her writing in 1957 to a literary agent recommended by Truman Capote, who advised her to quit the airline and concentrate on writing. After finishing the first draft and returning it to Lippincott, the manuscript, at that point titled \”Go Set a watchman\”, fell into the hands Tay Hohoff Torrey, known professionally as Tay Hoeff. After it was finished, it was re-titled Atticus but it went a character portrait to reflect that the story went a long way to reflect Lee’s own feelings about her hometown. In the following two and a half years, Lee led a two-year journey from New York to Alabama to write the next two drafts of the novel. She would later recount in a corporate history of Lipp Incott that she was impressed by the spark of the true writer flashed in every line, which she would later describe in every sentence. In 1960, Lee wrote the book, and it was published in July 11, 1960.