Here's The New York Times' original 1960 review of To Kill a Mockingbird
Fifty-five years after the release of her classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, it was announced today that Harper Lee will share another work with the world. Go Set a Watchman, which is essentially a sequel to Lee's much-loved first offering, will be released on July 14.
But before it won a Pulitzer Prize and staked a claim on middle school reading lists everywhere, To Kill a Mockingbird was just another book being reviewed by The New York Times. In the July 13, 1960 paper, reviewer Herbert Mitgang dubs Mockingbird "a winning first novel by a fresh writer with something significant to say."
Set in the 1930s in a fictional Alabama town, the book centers on the trial of a black rape suspect being defended by a white lawyer, Atticus Finch, who is also the father of the book's 9-year-old protagonist, Scout. Mitgang includes one of the book's most poignant exchanges, in which Scout questions Atticus about his souring reputation in their small community, to illustrate Lee's deft portrayal of "the opening of the eyes of Southern childhood to the dreary facts of Negro-white injustices." The novel "opens the chrysalis of childhood quietly and dramatically," he writes. "Miss Lee's original characters are people to cherish." Read the full review at The New York Times.
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