To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by the american author Harper lee It was published in July 1960 and became instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools.To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize a year after its release, and it has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are 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.