49 Fun Facts About To Kill a Mockingbird

In which year was To Kill a Mockingbird first published?

To Kill a Mockingbird was first published by J. B. Lippincott on 11 July 1960, when Harper Lee was 34; it became an immediate bestseller.

What is the name of the fictional Alabama town where the novel is set?

Maycomb, the seat of Maycomb County, is the novel's fictional Alabama town, a 'tired old town' of the Depression; the story runs across three years, 1933 to 1935.

What is the narrator Scout's real first name?

Scout's real name is Jean Louise Finch; she is nearly six when the book opens and narrates the story as an adult looking back on her childhood.

Which member of the Finch household is a Black cook who has helped raise the children for years?

Calpurnia is the Finches' Black cook and a mother figure to the children; she scolds Scout for mocking Walter Cunningham's table manners, and the children's father backs her.

What is the nickname of Charles Baker Harris, the boy who visits each summer?

Dill is the nickname of Charles Baker Harris, the small, imaginative boy from Meridian, Mississippi, who spends summers next door with his aunt Rachel and dares the children to make Boo Radley come out.

Which famous writer was the real-life model for Dill?

Truman Capote, born Truman Persons, spent childhood summers next door to Harper Lee in Alabama, living with his mother's relatives; Lee drew the character of Dill from him.

What is the first name of the reclusive neighbour known as "Boo" Radley?

Boo Radley's real name is Arthur Radley; shut inside the house since a teenage scrape with the law, he is the subject of the children's rumours and ultimately saves them.

Who is Atticus appointed to defend?

Judge Taylor appoints Scout's father to defend Tom Robinson, a Black field hand accused of raping a white woman; he takes the case seriously despite the town's hostility.

Who is the young white woman whose accusation leads to the trial?

Mayella Ewell, the 19-year-old eldest of the Ewell children, is the accuser; the trial suggests she made advances to the defendant and was beaten by her father for it.

How does Scout break up the lynch mob that confronts Atticus outside the jail?

Recognising Mr. Cunningham and talking to him heart-to-heart shames the men into dispersing.

From where do Jem, Scout and Dill watch the trial?

The three children watch from the colored balcony, where Reverend Sykes, pastor of the Black church, finds them seats after the white section downstairs is full.

Which animal must Atticus shoot in the street, read by critics as a symbol of facing prejudice alone?

The rabid dog, Tim Johnson, staggers down the street and Scout's father, nicknamed 'One-Shot Finch' in his youth, drops it with a single rifle shot.

Which elderly neighbour fighting a morphine addiction gives Jem a lesson in courage?

Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose makes Scout's brother read to her every afternoon as punishment for wrecking her camellias; she dies free of morphine, which their father calls real courage.

After the trial, who vows revenge and spits in Atticus's face?

Bob Ewell, the accuser's father, spits in the lawyer's face and swears revenge; he later prowls around Judge Taylor's house and harasses the dead defendant's widow, Helen.

Jem and Scout are attacked while walking home from what event?

The attack comes after the Halloween pageant at the school, where Scout, dressed as a ham, had fallen asleep backstage and missed her cue.

What injury does Jem suffer in the attack?

He is knocked unconscious, and a mysterious man carries him home; Scout realises it is Boo Radley.

How does Sheriff Tate decide to report Bob Ewell's death in order to protect Boo?

Sheriff Heck Tate insists the attacker fell on his own knife, refusing to drag the shy Boo into the limelight; Scout agrees that exposing him would be like shooting a mockingbird.

Why, as Miss Maudie explains to Scout, is it a sin to kill a mockingbird?

Miss Maudie gives Scout the explanation after Atticus lets the children shoot bluejays with their Christmas air rifles.

Which 19th-century essayist supplies the novel's epigraph, "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once"?

The epigraph 'Lawyers, I suppose, were children once' comes from Charles Lamb, the English essayist of Essays of Elia (1823), and sets up the book's child's-eye view of the law.

Where did Lee take the surname Finch from?

Finch was the maiden name of Harper Lee's mother, Frances Cunningham Finch; the bird surname sits alongside the mockingbird motif that runs through the novel.

Harper Lee's father, the model for Atticus, never took another criminal case after what happened in 1919?

In 1919 Amasa Coleman Lee defended two Black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper; both were convicted and hanged, and he never took another criminal case afterwards.

Which Alabama man, tried for rape near Monroeville in the 1930s, likely inspired the novel's defendant?

Walter Lett, a Black man convicted in the 1930s of raping a white woman near Monroeville, had his death sentence commuted after local letters questioned the charge; Lee's father's newspaper covered the case.

Which editor at J. B. Lippincott guided Lee's early manuscript into To Kill a Mockingbird?

Tay Hohoff, a senior editor at J. B. Lippincott, spent more than two years guiding Lee's rewrites; she saw 'the spark of the true writer' in the first manuscript.

Which award did To Kill a Mockingbird win in 1961?

To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961, less than a year after publication, while the book was still on the bestseller lists.

Harper Lee gave her last interview to a journalist in which year?

Lee's last full interview was with Roy Newquist for WQXR radio in 1964; after that she refused press requests and stayed out of public life until her death in February 2016.

In a 1964 interview, Lee said she aspired to be the Jane Austen of which place?

Lee told Roy Newquist in 1964 that all she wanted was to be 'the Jane Austen of south Alabama', a chronicler of small-town life in her own corner of the state.

Which US president awarded Harper Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007?

President George W. Bush presented Harper Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House on 5 November 2007, citing the novel's influence on American character.

Go Set a Watchman, published in 2015, was what in relation to To Kill a Mockingbird?

Completed in 1957, it follows an adult Scout visiting Maycomb from New York twenty years after the novel's events.

The title Go Set a Watchman comes from which book of the Bible?

The title comes from Isaiah 21:6, 'Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth', which the minister Mr. Stone takes as his text in the novel.

Who played Atticus Finch in the 1962 film?

Gregory Peck won the 1963 Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the 1962 film; Lee said the part gave him 'an opportunity to play himself'.

Which future star made his big-screen debut as Boo Radley in the 1962 film?

Robert Duvall made his film debut as the silent Boo Radley in 1962; he stayed out of the sun for six weeks and dyed his hair blond to look as though he had never left the house.

Who directed the 1962 film adaptation?

Robert Mulligan directed the 1962 film, earning a Best Director Oscar nomination; his producing partner Alan J. Pakula told the studio, 'Have you read the book? That's the story.'

Who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1962 film?

Horton Foote won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 1962 film, one of its three Oscars from eight nominations; the others were Best Actor and Best Art Direction.

In 2003, the American Film Institute named Atticus Finch what?

AFI's 2003 list '100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains' ranked the character the greatest movie hero of the 20th century, ahead of Indiana Jones and James Bond; in 2008 AFI named the film its top courtroom drama.

Which composer wrote the film's celebrated score, recorded three separate times?

Elmer Bernstein composed the score, which opens with a child's halting piano theme; he received an Oscar nomination for it and re-recorded it in 1977 and 1996.

Which screenwriter wrote the Broadway adaptation that debuted in 2018?

Aaron Sorkin wrote the Broadway adaptation that opened at the Shubert Theatre in December 2018, with Jeff Daniels as the lawyer and Bartlett Sher directing.

Since 1990, a play based on the novel has been performed annually where?

The town is Monroeville, Harper Lee's hometown, where an amateur company stages the play each spring at the old county courthouse, with the trial scenes in the courtroom that inspired the novel's.

Which best-selling true-crime book did Lee help her friend Capote research?

In Cold Blood recounts the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas; Lee travelled there with its author, took notes and interviewed locals, and it appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.

What was Harper Lee's first name, which she dropped for publication?

Nelle Harper Lee — Nelle is her grandmother Ellen's name spelled backwards — was born in Monroeville on 28 April 1926; she published as Harper Lee so the name would not be read as 'Nellie'.

Which two literary categories do scholars use to describe the novel?

Scholars file the novel under Southern Gothic, for the eerie Radley house and the town's buried violence, and Bildungsroman, since it follows Scout's moral coming of age.

Where did the American Library Association rank the novel among the most challenged books of 2000 to 2009?

The American Library Association placed the novel 21st on its list of the most frequently challenged books of 2000–2009; objections cite its racial slurs, profanity and the rape accusation.

Which formidable relative moves in with the Finches and clashes with Atticus over firing the cook?

Aunt Alexandra, the children's formidable aunt from Finch's Landing, moves in to give Scout a 'feminine influence'; her brother refuses her demand that the cook be let go.

For which airline did Harper Lee work as a reservation clerk after moving to New York?

Harper Lee spent much of the 1950s as a reservation clerk for BOAC, the British Overseas Airways Corporation, in New York, until friends Michael and Joy Brown gave her a year's wages for Christmas 1956.

What working title did the manuscript carry after 'Go Set a Watchman' was rejected and before its final name?

After Go Set a Watchman was set aside, Lee retitled the manuscript Atticus, then changed it again to To Kill a Mockingbird so the book would not read as a portrait of one man.

Which publication's condensed-books series reprinted the novel in part, giving it an immediate wide readership?

Reader's Digest Condensed Books ran an abridged version soon after publication, putting the novel before a huge readership within months of its release; the full book then stayed on bestseller lists for well over a year.

Which city's mayor chose the novel as the first title of his One City, One Book program in 2001?

Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley launched One Book, One Chicago in autumn 2001 with To Kill a Mockingbird as its first selection, asking the whole city to read it together.

What did Harper Lee give Gregory Peck, so impressed was she by his performance?

Lee gave the actor her late father's pocket watch after watching him on set; he carried it in his pocket the night he won the Best Actor Oscar in April 1963.

Who wrote the stage adaptation that has played in Monroeville every May since 1990?

Christopher Sergel's 1970 adaptation is the version Monroeville's amateur Mockingbird Players have staged each spring since 1990, moving the trial into the old courthouse and seating audience members as the jury.

What did the entire graduating class do when Lee received an honorary doctorate from Notre Dame in 2006?

The next year President George W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.