To Kill a Mockingbird [inscribed and dated by Harper Lee]

Lee, Harper

ISBN 10: 0397001517 / ISBN 13: 9780397001514

Published by Harper & Row, Philadelphia & New York, 1993

About this Item

Philadelphia and New York: Harper & Row, [1993]. Later printing. Octavo, 296 pages. ISBN 0-397-00151-7. Publisher's cloth-backed boards; original, unclipped publisher's dust jacket retaining the $23.00 price.

SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY HARPER LEE in blue ink on the front free endpaper: "To Pat, with best wishes, Harper Lee, 1993."

A handsome dated presentation copy of one of the defining American novels of the twentieth century. First published in 1960 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961, To Kill a Mockingbird combines Scout Finch's retrospective childhood narration with a searching account of race, law, family, conscience, and community in Depression-era Alabama. Written during the modern civil-rights era, the novel's 1930s setting gives it a deliberately layered historical perspective; its continuing place in classrooms, courts, public debate, film, and theatre has made it both a cultural landmark and a work of enduring interpretive tension.

This 1993 copy is not the 1960 first edition. Its distinction is the author's full presentation inscription, signed and dated in the year of publication of this issue. Lee was famously private, and inscribed copies remain especially desirable when, as here, the inscription joins the recipient, a cordial sentiment, the author's full signature, and the date. The recipient is identified only as "Pat"; no closer association is claimed.

The original 1993 dust jacket reprises the celebrated red, black, and white tree design, here with the Pulitzer Prize roundel, and retains its publisher's price. The Lippincott name at the foot of the jacket spine is correct for this publisher-issued jacket and reflects the book's continuing Lippincott/Harper publishing history, not an assembled or supplied jacket.

CONDITION: Book: scattered foxing/spotting to the endpapers, visible in the photographs; otherwise no material defect noted. Dust jacket: unclipped, with the $23.00 price present; light rubbing and edgewear, with small nicks, short closed tears, and shallow chipping/loss concentrated at the spine ends, upper edge, and fore-corners; the jacket remains bright and presents well. The photographs form part of the condition description.

AUTHENTICITY AND PROVENANCE: The inscription is guaranteed authentic by Atelier Zweig. Documentary provenance is retained in our records and may be supplied privately to the purchaser.

A transparent, collector-grade copy: a later printing, clearly described as such, distinguished by a full Harper Lee presentation inscription dated 1993 and preserved in its correct, price-retaining publisher's dust jacket.

Atelier Zweig - L314.

Seller Inventory # L314

Bibliographic Details

• Title: To Kill a Mockingbird [inscribed and dated by Harper Lee]
• Publisher: Harper & Row, Philadelphia & New York
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0397001517
• ISBN 13: 9780397001514
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Two children in a small town in Alabama learn something about moral principles from their father when he is appointed to defend a black man on a rape charge.

Review

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber