To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. One of America’s most celebrated and influential writers, she is the author of the acclaimed novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman as well as the story and essay collection, The Land of Sweet Forever, published posthumously in 2025. Lee was awarded numerous literary awards and honors including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 2016 at the age of eight-nine.

“A powerful and enduring piece of literature.”  - Boston Globe
“The names Scout and Atticus—and, perhaps above all, the name Harper—reflect a respect not just for the arc of history, but for the hope that it does indeed bend toward justice.”  - The Atlantic
“One of the most—if not the most—beloved of American novels." - New Yorker
“A seminal American story, a touchstone of racial tolerance. . . . It’s a book determined to make young readers feel like grownups. . . and grownups feel like children in their petty grievances and prejudices.”  - USA Today
“The enduring appeal of Mockingbird lies not only in the plot or characters; the book is a mirror, a source of endless and revelatory conversation about who we are and have been as a country." - Washington Post
“The rare classic that speaks to all ages about the less triumphant aspects of American history.”  - Time
“A first novel of such rare excellence that it will no doubt make a great many readers slow down to relish more fully its simple distinction. . . . A novel of strong contemporary national significance.” - Chicago Tribune
“All of the tactile brilliance and none of the precocity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issues for Southern writers. . . . Novelist Lee’s prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life.” - Time (1960 review)