Do you remember the first time you read it? Maybe it was assigned in school. Maybe you picked it up on your own. Either way, there is a good chance To Kill a Mockingbird left a mark you never quite forgot.
On July 11, 1960, Harper Lee, a complete unknown at the time, published her very first novel. Sixty-six years later, it is still being called the greatest book ever written.
A Story That Grabbed a Generation
The novel is set in a fictional Alabama town called Maycomb during the Great Depression. Young Scout Finch watches her father, attorney Atticus Finch, defend Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Through Scout’s eyes, Lee wrote about racism, justice, and moral courage in a way that felt true to the bone.
The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961, just one year after it came out. By now it has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.
And then, of course, there was the movie. The 1962 film starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and went on to win the Academy Award. If you saw it in the theater, you were there for a piece of history.
The Lists Keep Coming
Decade after decade, readers keep putting this book at the top. In 2008, a nationwide poll named it the greatest novel of all time. In 2018, PBS ran The Great American Read and To Kill a Mockingbird finished first, drawing more than four million votes from readers across the country.
In 2021, The New York Times asked more than 200,000 readers to name the best book of the past 125 years. It came in at number one. TIME Magazine also ranked it first on its All-TIME 100 Novels list.
What One Author Said About It
Barnes & Noble recently asked best-selling author William Kent Krueger, who wrote God’s Country, to name the Great American Novel as part of a list marking America’s 250th birthday. He chose this one.
“With this novel, Harper Lee offers readers the almost perfect piece of storytelling. Rich characterization, a profound sense of time and place, powerful language, and important themes make this work a classic that should be required reading for students in every American literature class. … it’s told in one of the truest and most compelling narrative voices in the American canon. I reread this book every few years to remind myself of the magic that’s possible with the written word.”
Still Sparking Conversation Today
Atticus Finch has inspired generations of lawyers who say he was the reason they went into law. The novel remains one of the most widely taught books in American schools.
It is also one of the most frequently challenged and banned books in the country, because of its language and its portrayal of race. That debate has been going on for more than six decades and shows no sign of stopping.
For most of its life, To Kill a Mockingbird was Harper Lee’s only book. It stayed that way for 55 years, until Go Set a Watchman was published in 2015.
Sixty-six years is a long time for anything to hold its place at the top. For a first novel by an unknown writer from Alabama, it is something close to a miracle.
If it has been a while since you last read it, this might be the year to go back.