To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1960 Southern Gothic novel by American author Harper Lee, which became instantly successful upon release and is widely read in high schools and middle schools in the United States; it won the Pulitzer Prize a year after its release and has become a classic of modern American literature, with its plot and characters loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors, and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was ten. Despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality, the novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, and Atticus Finch, the narrator's father, has served as a moral hero for many readers and a model of integrity for lawyers; as a Southern Gothic novel and Bildungsroman, its primary themes involve racial injustice and the loss of innocence, and scholars have noted that Lee also addresses issues of class, courage, compassion and gender roles in the Deep South.