Today is the birthday of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. It was published on July 11, 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1961. It's one of my all-time favorite books. You can read more about Lee on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
The book is still a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal.
According to The Writer's Almanac, when the book was first published in 1961, "The opening line of the Washington Post review read, 'A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere 18 ounces of new fiction bearing the title To Kill a Mockingbird.'"
The book is still a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal.
According to The Writer's Almanac, when the book was first published in 1961, "The opening line of the Washington Post review read, 'A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere 18 ounces of new fiction bearing the title To Kill a Mockingbird.'"
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