Cindy has picked a classic tale for our June 2013 read: To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee Harper. It's one of her all-time favorite books.
ABOUT THE BOOK
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by
Harper Lee published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the
Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern
American literature.
The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations
of her family and neighbors, as well as on 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 as a model of integrity
for lawyers. One critic explains the novel's impact by writing, "In 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. Scholars
have noted that Lee also addresses issues of class, courage, 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 subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms, often
challenged for its use of racial epithets.
Reception to the novel varied widely upon publication. Literary
analysis of it is sparse, considering the number of copies sold and its
widespread use in education. Author Mary McDonough Murphy, who collected
individual impressions of the book by several authors and public
figures, calls
To Kill a Mockingbird "an astonishing phenomenon".
[2] In 2006, British librarians ranked the book ahead of the
Bible as one "every adult should read before they die".
[3] It 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.
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1926,
Harper Lee grew up in the Southern town of
Monroeville, Alabama, where she became close friends with soon-to-be famous writer
Truman Capote. She attended
Huntingdon College in
Montgomery (1944–45), and then studied law 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 colleges, she wrote short stories
and other works about racial injustice, a rarely mentioned topic on
such campuses at the time.
[4] 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 about
people in 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, including Michael and Joy Brown and Alice Lee Finch,
[5] allowed her to write uninterrupted for a year.
[6]
Ultimately, 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 when Lee became so frustrated that she tossed the
manuscript out the window into the snow. Her agent made her retrieve it.
[7] The book was published on July 11, 1960, initially titled
Atticus. Lee renamed it to reflect a story that went beyond a character portrait.
[8] The editorial team at Lippincott warned Lee that she would probably sell only several thousand copies.
[9]
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."
[10] Instead of a "quick and merciful death",
Reader's Digest Condensed Books chose the book for reprinting in part, which gave it a wide readership immediately.
[11] Since the original publication, the book has never been out of print.
INFORMATION FROM WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
