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To Kill A Mockingbird
First edition cover - Late printing
Author	Harper Lee
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Publication date	July 11, 1960
Media type	Print (Hardback and Paperback)
Pages	296 (first edition, hardback)

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. Upon its release, it was instantly successful and has become a classic of modern American fiction. The novel is loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers, and a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explained the novel's impact by writing, "[i]n the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism."^[1]

As a Southern Gothic novel and a bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence, but scholars have also noted that Lee addresses the issues of class tensions, courage and compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South. The book is widely taught in schools in English-speaking countries with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been the target of various campaigns to have it removed from public classrooms. Often the book is challenged for its use of racial epithets, and writers have noticed that although white readers react favorably to the novel, black readers tend to respond less positively.

Lee's novel was initially reviewed by at least 30 newspapers and magazines, which varied widely in their assessment of it. More recently, it has been ranked by librarians before the Bible as a book "every adult should read before they die".^[2] The book was adapted into an Oscar-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, transforming the town into a tourist destination. To date, it is Lee's only published novel, and although she continues to respond to the book's impact, she has refused any personal publicity for herself or the novel since 1964.

Contents 1 Biographical background and publication 2 Plot summary 3 Autobiographical elements 4 Style 4.1 Genres 5 Reception 5.1 Atticus Finch and the legal profession 5.2 Controversy 5.2.1 Challenges and bans 5.2.2 Canard of Capote authorship 5.3 Honors 6 Adaptations 6.1 1962 film 6.2 Play 7 See also 8 Notes 9 Bibliography

[edit] Biographical background and publication

Born in 1926, Harper Lee grew up in the Southern town of Monroeville, Alabama, where she became close friends with the soon-to-be famous writer Truman Capote. She attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944–45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945–49). While attending college, she wrote for campus literary magazines: Huntress at Huntingdon and the humor magazine Rammer Jammer at the University of Alabama. At both schools, she wrote short stories and other works about racial injustice, a rarely mentioned topic on these campuses at the time.^[3] In 1950, she 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 about people in her hometown, Monroeville. Hoping to be published, Lee presented her writing in 1957 to a literary agent recommended by Capote. An editor at J. B. Lippincott advised her to quit the airline and concentrate on writing. Donations from friends allowed her to write uninterrupted for a year.^[4]

Lee spent two and a half years writing To Kill a Mockingbird. A description of the book's creation by the National Endowment for the Arts relates an episode wherein Lee became so frustrated that she tossed the manuscript out the window into the snow. Her agent made her retrieve it from the street.^[5] The book was published on July 11, 1960. It was initially titled Atticus, but Lee retitled the novel to reflect a story that went beyond a character portrait.^[6] The editorial team at Lippincott warned Lee that she would probably sell only several thousand copies at the most.^[7] In 1964, Lee recalled her hopes for the book when she said, "I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird.' … I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected."^[8] Instead of a "quick and merciful death", the book was republished in part by Reader's Digest Condensed Books, which gave it a wide readership immediately.^[9] Since its publication, it has never been out of print.

[edit] Plot summary

See also: List of characters in To Kill a Mockingbird

The story takes place during three years of the Great Depression in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama. The narrator, six-year-old Scout Finch, lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer. The three children are terrified by, and fascinated with, their neighbor, the reclusive "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo and for many years, few have seen him. The children feed each other's imaginations with rampant rumors about his grotesque appearance and his reasons for remaining hidden, and they dream of ways to get him to come out of his house. Following two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone is leaving them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times, the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, never appears in person.

Atticus is assigned to defend a black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. Scout is subjected to other children taunting Atticus, calling him a "nigger-lover", and she is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting, even though he has told her not to. For his part, Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom, but this danger is averted when Scout, Jem, and Dill shame the mob into dispersing by forcing them to view the situation from Atticus' and Tom's points of view.

Because Atticus does not want them to be present at Tom Robinson's trial, Scout, Jem and Dill watch in secret from the colored balcony. Atticus establishes that the accusers — Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell, the town drunk — are lying. It also becomes clear that the friendless Mayella was making sexual advances towards Tom and that her father caught her in the act. Despite significant evidence of Tom's innocence, he is convicted. Jem's faith in justice is badly shaken, as is Atticus', when a hopeless Tom is shot and killed when trying to escape from prison.

Bob Ewell is humiliated by the trial and vows revenge. He spits in Atticus' face on the street, tries to break into the judge's house, and menaces Tom Robinson's widow. Finally, he attacks the defenseless Jem and Scout as they walk home from a Halloween pageant at their school. Jem's arm is broken in the struggle, but, amid the confusion, someone comes to their rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout eventually recognizes him as the reclusive Boo Radley.

Maycomb's sheriff arrives and discovers that Bob Ewell has been killed. The sheriff argues with Atticus about the prudence and ethics of holding Jem or Boo responsible. Atticus eventually accepts the sheriff's story that Ewell simply fell on his own knife. Boo asks Scout to walk him home, and after she says goodbye to him at his front door, he disappears again. While standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines life from Boo's perspective and regrets that they never repaid him for the gifts he had given them.

[edit] Autobiographical elements

Lee has said that To Kill a Mockingbird is not an autobiography, but rather an example of how an author "should write about what he knows and write truthfully".^[10] Nevertheless, several people and events from Lee's childhood parallel those of the fictional Scout. Lee's father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was an attorney, similar to Atticus Finch, and in 1919, he defended two black men accused of murder. After they were convicted, hanged, and mutilated,^[11] he never tried another criminal case. Lee's father was also the editor and publisher of the Monroeville newspaper; although more conservative than Atticus with regard to race, he gradually became more liberal in his later years.^[12] Though Scout's mother died when she was a baby, and Lee was 25 when her mother died, her mother was prone to a nervous condition that rendered her mentally and emotionally absent.^[13] Lee also had a brother named Edwin, who—like the fictional Jem—was four years older than his sister. As in the novel, a black housekeeper came once a day to care for the Lee house and family.

The character of Dill was modeled on Lee's childhood friend, Truman Capote, known then as Truman Persons.^[14][15] Just as Dill lived next door to Scout during the summer, Capote lived next door to Lee with his aunts while his mother visited New York City.^[16] Like Dill, Capote had an impressive imagination and a gift for fascinating stories. Both Lee and Capote were atypical children: both loved to read, and whereas Lee was a scrappy tomboy who was quick to fight, Capote was the object of ridicule for his advanced vocabulary and lisp. She and Capote made up and acted out stories they wrote on an old Underwood typewriter Lee's father gave them. They became very good friends when both felt alienated from their peers; Capote called the two of them "apart people".^[17] In 1960, Capote and Lee traveled to Kansas together to investigate the multiple murder that was the basis of Capote's nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood.

Down the street from the Lees lived a family whose house was always boarded up; they served as the models for the fictional Radleys. The son of the family got into some legal trouble and the father kept him at home for 24 years out of shame. He was hidden until virtually forgotten by everyone he knew and died in 1952.^[18]

The origin of Tom Robinson is less clear, though many have speculated that his inspiration came from several models. When Lee was 10 years old, a white woman near Monroeville accused a black man named Walter Lett of raping her. The story and the trial were covered by her father's newspaper, and Lett was convicted and sentenced to death. After a series of letters appeared claiming Lett had been falsely accused, his sentence was commuted to life in prison, where he died of tuberculosis in 1937.^[19] Scholars have guessed that the inspiration for Tom Robinson's plight was the infamous case of the Scottsboro Boys,^[20] in which nine black men were convicted of raping two white women on very poor evidence. However, Lee stated in 2005 that she had in mind something less sensational, although the Scottsboro case served "the same purpose" to display Southern prejudices.^[21] Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered for flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, and whose death is credited as the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement, is also considered a model for Tom Robinson.^[22]

[edit] Style

"Harper Lee has a remarkable gift of story-telling. Her art is visual, and with cinematographic fluidity and subtlety we see a scene melting into another scene without jolts of transition.". R. A. Dave in Harper Lee's Tragic Vision, 1974

Critics and reviewers note one of Lee's strongest elements of style is her talent for storytelling, which in one review was called "tactile brilliance".^[23] Later, another scholar wrote, "Harper Lee has a remarkable gift of story-telling. Her art is visual, and with cinematographic fluidity and subtlety we see a scene melting into another scene without jolts of transition."^[24] Lee combines the narrator's voice of a child observing her surroundings with a grown woman's reflecting on her childhood. This narrative method allows Lee to tell a "delightfully deceptive" story that mixes the simplicity of childhood observation with adult situations, complicated by hidden motivations and unquestioned tradition.^[25] However, at times the blending is effective enough to cause reviewers to question Scout's preternatural vocabulary and depth of understanding.^[26] Both Harding LeMay and the novelist and literary critic Granville Hicks expressed doubt that children as sheltered as Scout and Jem could understand the complexities and horrors involved in the trial for Tom Robinson's life.^[27][28]

Writing about Lee's style and use of humor in a tragic story, scholar Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin states: "Laughter ...(exposes) the gangrene under the beautiful surface but also by demeaning it; one can hardly ...be controlled by what one is able to laugh at."^[29] Scout's role as a girl who beats up boys, hates wearing dresses, and swears for the fun of it, provides humor, but Tavernier-Courbin notes that Lee uses parody, satire, and irony to address complex issues, especially by using a child's perspective. After Dill promises to marry her, then spends too much time with Jem, Scout reasons the best way to get him to pay attention to her is to beat him up, which she does several times.^[30] Lee employs satire in describing Scout's first day in school, a frustrating experience; her teacher says she must undo the damage Atticus has wrought in teaching her to read and write, and forbids Atticus from teaching her further.^[31] Scout tries to converse with Mr. Cunningham about what she understands as his "entailment", after he arrives to lynch Tom Robinson.^[32] However, Lee treats the most unfunny situations with irony, as Jem and Scout try to understand how Maycomb embraces racism and still sincerely tries to remain a decent society. Satire and irony are used to such an extent that Tavernier-Courbin suggests one interpretation for the book's title: Lee is doing the mocking–of education, the justice system, and her own society by using them as subjects of her humorous disapproval.^[29]

Critics also note the entertaining methods used to drive the plot.^[33] When Atticus is out of town, Jem locks a Sunday school classmate in the church basement with the furnace during a game of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. This prompts their black housekeeper Calpurnia, to escort Scout and Jem to her church, where they get a glimpse into her personal life, as well as Tom Robinson's.^[34] Scout falls asleep during the Halloween pageant and makes a tardy entrance onstage, causing the audience to laugh uproariously. Scout is so distracted and embarrassed that she prefers to go home in her ham costume, which saves her life.^[35]

[edit] Genres

Scholars have characterized To Kill a Mockingbird as both a Southern Gothic novel and a bildungsroman. The grotesque and near-supernatural qualities of Boo Radley and his house and the element of racial injustice involving Tom Robinson contribute to the aura of the Gothic in the novel.^[36][37] Lee used the term "Gothic" to describe the architecture of Maycomb's courthouse and in regard to Dill's exaggeratedly morbid performances as Boo Radley.^[38] Outsiders are also an important element of Southern Gothic texts. One scholar notes that Lee challenges every authority in Maycomb: the school and its teachers, the criminal justice system, and the religious establishments. Yet Scout still reveres Atticus as an authority above all others, because he believes that following one's conscience is the highest priority, even when the result is social ostracism.^[39] However, scholars debate about the Southern Gothic classification, noting that Boo Radley is in fact human, protective, and benevolent. Furthermore, in addressing themes such as alcoholism, incest, rape, and racial violence, Lee wrote about her small town realistically rather than melodramatically. She portrayed the problems of individual characters as universal underlying issues.^[37]

The children, Scout and Jem, face hard realities and learn from them in To Kill a Mockingbird, leading critics to categorize the novel as a bildungsroman, which typically describes the coming-of-age of the main character. Lee seems to examine Jem's sense of loss about how his neighbors have disappointed him more than Scout's. As Jem says to Miss Maudie the day after the trial, "It's like bein' a caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon ... I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they seemed like".^[40] This leads him to struggle with understanding the separations of race and class. Just as the novel is an illustration of the changes Jem faces, it is also an exploration of the realities Scout must face as an atypical girl on the verge of womanhood. As one scholar writes, "To Kill a Mockingbird can be read as a feminist bildungsroman, for Scout emerges from her childhood experiences with a clear sense of her place in her community and an awareness of her potential power as the woman she will one day be."^[41]

[edit] Reception

First Edition Points

To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

Number of printings: 5000 approx. Boards Brown, with a green cloth spine. Verso FIRST EDITION Dust jacket Designed by Shirley Smith, $3.95 on the lower corner, no printing statement, Harper Lee's photograph on back, Truman Capote quote in green ink on the front flap, Jonathan Daniels blurb on the rear flap. Reference Pulitzer Prize First Edition Guide, accessed 24 March 2008. See also: Cather, Patrick (n. d.) "Buying and Selling Alabama-related Books for 40 Years." [1], accessed 16 March 2008.

Despite her editors' warnings that the book might not sell well, it quickly became a sensation, bringing acclaim to Lee not only in literary circles, but also in her hometown of Monroeville and throughout Alabama.^[42] The book went through numerous subsequent printings and became widely available through its inclusion in the Book of the Month Club and editions released by Reader's Digest Condensed Books.^[43]

Initial reactions to the novel were varied. The New Yorker declared it "skilled, unpretentious, and totally ingenious",^[44] and The Atlantic Monthly's reviewer rated it as "pleasant, undemanding reading", but found the narrative voice—"a six-year-old girl with the prose style of a well-educated adult"—to be implausible.^[26] Time Magazine's 1960 review of the book states that it "teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life" and calls Scout Finch "the most appealing child since Carson McCullers' Frankie got left behind at the wedding".^[23] The Chicago Sunday Tribune noted the even-handed approach to the narration of the novel's events, writing: "This is in no way a sociological novel. It underlines no cause.... To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel of strong contemporary national significance."^[45]

Not all comments were enthusiastic, however. Some reviews lamented the use of poor white Southerners, and one-dimensional black victims,^[46] and Granville Hicks labeled the book "melodramatic and contrived".^[28] When the book was first released, Southern writer Flannery O'Connor commented, "I think for a child's book it does all right. It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they're reading a child's book. Somebody ought to say what it is."^[47] Carson McCullers apparently agreed with the Time magazine review, writing to a cousin: "Well, honey, one thing we know is that she's been poaching on my literary preserves."^[48]

One year after being published, To Kill a Mockingbird had been translated into ten languages. In the years since, it has sold over 30 million copies and been translated into over 40 languages. To Kill a Mockingbird has never been out of print in hardcover or paperback and has become part of the standard literature curriculum. A 1990 survey of secondary school teachers and librarians indicated that among books required for secondary students, the novel ranks fourth.^[49] A 1991 survey by the Book of the Month Club and the Library of Congress Center for the Book found that To Kill a Mockingbird was rated behind only the Bible in books that are "most often cited as making a difference",^[49] and has appeared on numerous other lists that describe its impact.^[50]

[edit] Atticus Finch and the legal profession

Main article: Atticus Finch

One of the most significant impacts To Kill a Mockingbird has had is Atticus Finch's model of integrity for the legal profession. As scholar Alice Petry explains, "Atticus has become something of a folk hero in legal circles and is treated almost as if he were an actual person."^[51] Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center cites Atticus Finch as the reason he became a lawyer, and Richard Matsch, the federal judge who presided over the Timothy McVeigh trial, counts Atticus as a major judicial influence.^[52] One law professor at the University of Notre Dame stated that the most influential textbook he taught from was To Kill a Mockingbird, and an article in the Michigan Law Review claims, "No real-life lawyer has done more for the self-image or public perception of the legal profession," before questioning whether, "Atticus Finch is a paragon of honor or an especially slick hired gun".^[53]

In 1992, an Alabama editorial called for the death of Atticus, saying that as liberal as Atticus was, he still worked within a system of institutionalized racism and sexism and should not be revered. The editorial sparked a flurry of responses from attorneys who entered the profession because of him and esteemed him as a hero.^[54] Critics of Atticus maintain he is morally ambiguous and does not use his legal skills to challenge the racist status quo in Maycomb.^[55] However, in 1997, the Alabama Bar Association erected a monument to Atticus in Monroeville, marking his existence as the "first commemorative milestone in the state's judicial history".^[56]

[edit] Controversy

[edit] Challenges and bans

To Kill a Mockingbird has been a source of significant controversy since its being the subject of classroom study as early as 1963. The book's racial slurs, profanity, and frank discussion of rape have led people to challenge its appropriateness in libraries and classrooms across America. The American Library Association reported that To Kill a Mockingbird was #41 of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000.^[57][58]

One of the first incidents of the book being challenged was in Hanover, Virginia in 1966: a parent protested that the use of rape as a plot device was immoral. Johnson cites examples of letters to local newspapers, which ranged from amusement to fury; those letters expressing the most outrage, however, complained about Mayella Ewell's attraction to Tom Robinson over the depictions of rape.^[59] Upon learning the school administrators were holding hearings to decide the book's appropriateness for the classroom, Harper Lee sent $10 to The Richmond News Leader suggesting it to be used toward the enrollment of "the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice".^[60]

The controversy that has surrounded the book has not been limited to the United States. In the late 1990s, school districts in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada attempted to have the book removed from standard teaching curricula, stating:

The terminology in this novel subjects students to humiliating experiences that rob them of their self-respect and the respect of their peers. The word 'Nigger' is used 48 times [in] the novel...We believe that the English Language Arts curriculum in Nova Scotia must enable all students to feel comfortable with ideas, feelings and experiences presented without fear of humiliation ... To Kill a Mockingbird is clearly a book that no longer meets these goals and therefore must no longer be used for classroom instruction."^[61]

The response to these attempts to remove the book from standard teaching was passionate across Canada and the United States, and many of the initial complainants were labeled as overly sensitive and "benign censors."^[61] Isaac Saney, who supports attempts to ban the book, concludes that the media response to the removal effort was a form of institutionalized racism: "The media's editorialising against all 'censorship' and 'banning' includes vigorous hostility to the censorship and banning of racism. Its advocacy of freedom of speech includes freedom of speech for racists and fascists."^[61]

[edit] Canard of Capote authorship

Lee's childhood friend, the author Truman Capote, wrote on the dust jacket of the first edition, "[s]omeone rare has written this very fine first novel: a writer with the liveliest sense of life, and the warmest, most authentic sense of humor. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable."^[62] This comment has been construed to suggest that Capote wrote the book or edited it heavily.^[5] The only supporting evidence for this rumor is the 2003 report of a Tuscaloosa newspaper, which quoted Capote's biological father, Archulus Persons, as claiming that Capote had written "almost all" of the book.^[63] The rumors were put to rest in 2006 when a Capote letter was donated to Monroeville's literary heritage museum. Writing to a neighbor in Monroeville in 1959, Capote mentioned that Lee was writing a book that was to be published soon. Extensive notes between Lee and her editor at Lippincott also refute the rumor of Capote's authorship.^[64] Lee's older sister Alice has responded to the rumor, saying: "That's the biggest lie ever told."^[19]

[edit] Honors

During the years immediately following the novel's publication, Lee enjoyed the attention its popularity garnered her, granting interviews, visiting schools, and attending events honoring the book. In 1961, when To Kill a Mockingbird was in its 41st week on the bestseller list, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, stunning Harper Lee.^[65] It also won the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in the same year.^[66] Starting in 1964, Lee began to turn down interviews, complaining of monotonous questioning. She has declined ever since to talk with reporters about the book. She has also steadfastly refused to provide an introduction, writing in 1995: "Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity. The only good thing about Introductions is that in some cases they delay the dose to come. Mockingbird still says what it has to say; it has managed to survive the years without preamble."^[67]

In 2001, Lee was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor.^[68] In the same year, Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley initiated a city-wide reading program through the city's libraries, and chose his favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird, as the first title of the "One City, One Book" program. Lee declared that "there is no greater honor the novel could receive".^[69] By 2004, the novel had been chosen by 25 different communities for variations of the citywide reading program, more than any other novel.^[70]

In 2006, Lee was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Notre Dame.^[71] During the ceremony, the graduating class and audience gave Lee a standing ovation, and the entire graduating class held up copies of To Kill a Mockingbird to honor her.^[72]

Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 5, 2007 by President George W. Bush. In his remarks, Bush stated, "[o]ne reason To Kill a Mockingbird succeeded is the wise and kind heart of the author, which comes through on every page.... To Kill a Mockingbird has influenced the character of our country for the better. It's been a gift to the entire world. As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever."^[73]

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] 1962 film

Main article: To Kill a Mockingbird (film)

The book was made into the well-received film with the same title, starring Gregory Peck in 1962. The film's producer, Alan J. Pakula, remembered Paramount Studios executives questioning him about a potential script: "They said, 'What story do you plan to tell for the film?' I said, 'Have you read the book?' They said, 'Yes.' I said, 'That's the story.'"^[74] The movie won three Oscars: Best Actor for Gregory Peck, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Horton Foote. It was nominated for five more Oscars including Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Mary Badham, the actress who played Scout.^[75]

Harper Lee was pleased with the movie, saying: "In that film the man and the part met.... I've had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I've always refused. That film was a work of art."^[76] Peck met Lee's father, the model for Atticus, prior to the filming. Lee's father died before the film's release, and Lee was so impressed with Peck's performance that she gave him her father's pocketwatch, which he had with him the evening he was awarded the Oscar for best actor.^[77] Years later, he was reluctant to tell Lee that the watch was stolen out of his luggage in London Heathrow Airport. When Peck eventually did tell Lee, he said she responded, "'Well, it's only a watch.' Harper - she feels deeply, but she's not a sentimental person about things."^[78] Lee and Peck shared a friendship long after the movie was made. Peck's grandson was named "Harper" in her honor.^[79]

In May 2005, Lee made an uncharacteristic appearance at the Los Angeles Public Library for an event in her honor. It was hosted by Peck's widow Veronique, who said of Lee: "She's like a national treasure. She's someone who has made a difference…with this book. The book is still as strong as it ever was, and so is the film. All the kids in the United States read this book and see the film in the seventh and eighth grades and write papers and essays. My husband used to get thousands and thousands of letters from teachers who would send them to him."^[8]

[edit] Play

The book has also been adapted as a play by Christopher Sergel. It debuted in 1990 in Monroeville, a town that labels itself "The Literary Capital of Alabama". The play runs every May on the county courthouse grounds and townspeople make up the cast.^[80] White male audience members are chosen at the intermission to make up the jury. During the courtroom scene the production moves into the Monroe County Courthouse and the audience is racially segregated. Author Albert Murray said of the relationship of the town to the novel (and the annual performance), "It becomes part of the town ritual, like the religious underpinning of Mardi Gras. With the whole town crowded around the actual courthouse, it's part of a central, civic education - what Monroeville aspires to be."^[81]

According to a National Geographic article, the novel is so revered in Monroeville that people quote lines from it like Scripture; yet Harper Lee herself has refused to attend any performances, because "she abhors anything that trades on the book's fame".^[82] To underscore this sentiment, Lee demanded that a book of recipes named "Calpurnia's Cookbook" not be published and sold out of the Monroe County Heritage Museum.^[83] Despite her discouragement, a rising number of tourists have come to Monroeville, hoping to see Lee's inspiration for the book, or Lee herself. Local residents call them "Mockingbird groupies", and although Lee is not reclusive, she refuses publicity and interviews with an emphatic "Hell no".^[84]

[edit] See also

• Southern literature
• To Kill a Mockingbird in popular culture

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

• Johnson, Claudia. To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries. Twayne Publishers: 1994. ISBN 0805780688
• Johnson, Claudia. Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historic Documents. Greenwood Press: 1994. ISBN 0313291934
• Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. HarperCollins: 1960 (Perennial Classics edition: 2002). ISBN 0060935464
• Petry, Alice. "Introduction" in On Harper Lee: Essays and Reflections. University of Tennessee Press: 1994. ISBN 1572335785
• Shields, Charles. Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. Henry Holt and Co.: 2006. ISBN 080507919X

Preceded by Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1961

Succeeded by The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor