Remembering Harper Lee

April 28 marks one hundred years since the birth of Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960. Frequently making lists of readers’ all-time favourites, the novel follows Scout, a young girl growing up in a southern American town in the 1930s. With her father Atticus a barrister fighting racism and injustice, the story shows the attitudes of the era, in a story that’s moving and thrilling as well as eminently readable for an often-studied school text.

If you haven’t ever read To Kill a Mockingbird, 2026 could well be the year to try it, and definitely time for a reread for those like me who love it. Hastings Library has a fair few copies of the book, in various formats, and even the graphic novel. There’s a DVD of the famous film starring Gregory Peck too.

It would be another fifty-five years before Lee would publish again, with the novel Go Set a Watchman, which features the same characters as To Kill a Mockingbird, but set two decades later against a backdrop of civil rights tension and political turmoil. The book came out a year before Lee died in 2016, but last year a further book by Lee was published. The Land of Sweet Forever is a collection of stories and essays collected together for the first time.

Posted by JAM

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