LEE, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird [FIRST UK EDITION OF THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING NOVEL]

London, Melbourne, Toronto: Heinemann, 1960. First English edition. Demy octavo. pp. 296. Purple paper boards, titled in silver. A very good copy in lightly frayed dust jacket. ‘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 neighbours, 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 humour, 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”. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ appeared on the ‘big screen’ in 1962, directed by Robert Mulligan. It stared Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch and Mary Badham in the role of Scout. The film, widely considered to be one of the greatest ever made, earned an overwhelmingly positive response from critics, and was a box office success as well, earning more than 10 times its budget. The film won three Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Peck, and was nominated for eight, including Best Picture. In 1995, the film was listed in the National Film Registry. It also ranks twenty-fifth on the American Film Institute’s 10th anniversary list of the greatest American movies of all time. In 2003, AFI named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century. Even from a small English village, Atticus Finch, the lawyer defending a wrongly accused African American in the deep south of America, seemed the epitome of quiet decency, fatherly tenderness and physical courage.

[L3 6A]