What the 1961 Pulitzer jury said about ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment in the work of es­tab­lished writers in 1960, the Pulitzer fic­tion jury re­com­men­ded a new au­thor, Harp­er Lee, be honored for her de­but nov­el “To Kill a Mock­ing­bird.”

Jur­ors said: “Her achieve­ment, it seems to us, may be gauged by the fact that, al­though her story em­braces all the cliches of a South­ern nov­el, they are nev­er­the­less made to ap­pear here as fresh and ori­gin­al.”