Elaine Showalter
Death of a Mockingbird
In the fifty-five years since its publication, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has become an American classic, taught in schools across the country, made into a memorable film and enshrined as what Oprah Winfrey has called ‘our national novel’. Until 14 July 2015, Lee had never published another book. But the release that day of the long-lost version of the original novel, Go Set a Watchman, was a literary and cultural bombshell. Atticus Finch, the revered, almost sanctified 1930s lawyer hero of To Kill a Mockingbird, is revealed in this book to have been a white supremacist.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Last Tweets