Harper Lee's reputation as an author rests on her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). An enormous popular success, the book was selected for distribution by the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club and was published in a shortened version as a Reader's Digest condensed book. It was also made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962. Moreover, the novel was critically acclaimed, winning among other awards the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (1961), the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1961), and the Bestsellers magazine's Paperback of the Year Award (1962).

Although Lee stresses that To Kill a Mockingbird is not autobiographical, she allows that a writer "should write about what he knows and write truthfully." The time period and setting of the novel obviously originate in the author's experience as the youngest of three children born to lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee (related to Robert E. Lee) and...