Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behaviour— to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humour and pathos - and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred. 

A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming of age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father - a crusading local lawyer - risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.  With warmth and understanding, Harper Lee brilliantly recreates not only her characters but a whole town and its way of life.  Scout and Jem Finch lose their innocence when their lawyer father defends a Negro charged with the rape of a white girl.  The lawyer is the town's conscience, but conscience makes more than cowards... 

“All the magic and truth that might seem deceptive or exaggerated in a factual account of a small town unfold beautifully in a new first novel called To Kill a Mockingbird. At a time when so many machine-tooled novels are simply documentaries disguised behind a few fictional changes, it is pleasing to recommend a book that shows what a novelist can accomplish with quite familiar situations … To Kill A Mockingbird opens the chrysalis of childhood quietly and dramatically … Miss Lee’s characters are people to cherish in this winning first novel by a fresh writer with something significant to say, south and north.”  –  The New York Times, 1960

Harper Lee was born in the Alabama town of Monroeville, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. Within a year, she had the first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird