On July 11, 1960, “Mockingbird” was published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. with critical and commercial success. Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year.
Set in the 1930s, “Mockingbird” follows the trial of a Black man accused of rape by a white woman in Monroeville. The narrator, a young girl named Scout, watches as her father, attorney Atticus Finch, defends the man at court amid racial tensions.
The film adaptation of the novel, with Mary Badham as narrator Scout and co-starring Gregory Peck as Finch, opened in late 1962 and was an instant hit.
Last year, HarperCollins published a new book by Lee: the quasi-sequel Go Set a Watchman. In this book, Scout—now 26—returns home from New York City to visit her aging father.
According to The Wall Street Journal, it was recently announced that “Mockingbird” is coming to Broadway during the 2017-18 season.
The AL.com item is at www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/harper_lee_dead_at_age_of_89_t_1.html.