Reading Order
To Kill a Mockingbird Reading Order
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) is a complete standalone novel narrated by Scout Finch, who looks back on her childhood in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. The central event is her father Atticus Finch's defense of Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 and is one of the most widely read and taught novels in American schools. A companion novel, Go Set a Watchman (2015) — an earlier draft of To Kill a Mockingbird — was published to considerable controversy after Lee's death.
Where to start
To Kill a Mockingbird
Complete To Kill a Mockingbird Book List
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To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee·1960·Begin here — Scout Finch's childhood in 1930s Maycomb, Alabama; her father Atticus defends Tom Robinson; Pulitzer Prize winner 1961; one of the most widely read American novels - Buy
Go Set a Watchman
OptionalHarper Lee·2015·An earlier draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, published as a novel — an adult Scout returns to Maycomb from New York and finds Atticus's views on race are different from what she believed; read with caution — published after Lee lost capacity to manage her affairs and caused significant controversy
To Kill a Mockingbird — Frequently Asked Questions
Is To Kill a Mockingbird a standalone?
To Kill a Mockingbird is self-contained and is Harper Lee's primary novel. Go Set a Watchman (2015) is a complicated case: it is an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that was submitted to publishers in the 1950s, rejected, and revised into the novel we know. It features an adult Scout returning to Maycomb. Its publication after Lee's death and while Lee had reportedly lost the capacity to make publishing decisions generated significant controversy; many scholars and Lee's friends believe she would not have wanted it published.
Who is Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Boo Radley (Arthur Radley) is Scout and Jem's reclusive neighbor who has not left his house in years — the neighborhood's boogeyman, the subject of children's myths. Over the course of the novel, Boo secretly leaves small gifts for Scout and Jem in a tree knothole, and at the novel's climax saves their lives when Bob Ewell attacks them. Boo Radley functions as a parallel to Tom Robinson: an innocent man whom society has caged and made monstrous through fear, and whose goodness cannot be recognized by the world that has condemned him.
Is Go Set a Watchman canonical?
Go Set a Watchman depicts Atticus Finch as a man who attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting and who opposes school desegregation in the 1950s — a very different character from the Atticus of To Kill a Mockingbird. Whether to read Go Set a Watchman as canonical — as revealing the 'true' Atticus beneath the novel's heroic version — is contested. Many scholars treat it as an early draft abandoned for good reasons; others argue it usefully complicates the earlier novel's idealization of white liberalism. Most readers choose to ignore it.
What does the title To Kill a Mockingbird mean?
Atticus tells Scout that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, because mockingbirds do nothing but make music for people to enjoy — they don't eat other birds' eggs, they don't nest in corncribs, they don't do anything but sing their hearts out. In the novel, Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are both mockingbirds — innocent people who do nothing harmful and who are destroyed by the community's fear and prejudice.
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