Harper Lee
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50 free Harper Lee trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Harper Lee wrote one of the most-read novels of the 20th century and then spent 55 years saying almost nothing in public. Born Nelle in Monroeville, Alabama, the daughter of a small-town lawyer, she grew up next door to Truman Capote, dropped out of law school, sold airline tickets in New York and turned a Christmas gift of a year's wages into To Kill a Mockingbird. These 50 questions cover the life around the book: her name and family, Capote and In Cold Blood, the editor Tay Hohoff and the manuscript thrown into the snow, the Pulitzer, Gregory Peck and the family friendship, her father signing autographs as Atticus, the abandoned follow-ups, the 1966 Virginia ban and the Beadle Bumble fund, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the copyright and museum lawsuits, the disputed discovery of Go Set a Watchman and the 2025 collection of early stories. Easy questions stick to the novel and the Oscar; the expert tier asks about Rammer Jammer, The Reverend and the Polish stylometry study. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a book-club night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who narrates To Kill a Mockingbird?
Scout
Scout narrates as a grown woman looking back on herself from age six, blending a child's view with adult hindsight.
Q 02Which Mockingbird character is falsely accused of rape?
Tom Robinson
Tom Robinson is convicted by an all-white jury despite the evidence, then shot dead while trying to escape from prison.
Q 03Which award did Lee's novel win in 1961?
Pulitzer Prize
Lee won the Pulitzer Prize with her debut novel, then published no other novel until 2015.
Q 04What was Lee's hometown?
Monroeville
Monroeville loosely inspired the novel's fictional town, though Lee denied that the book was autobiographical.
Q 05What was Lee's actual first name?
Nelle
Nelle was her grandmother Ellen's name spelled backwards; she dropped it from the book so readers wouldn't say Nellie.
Q 06In To Kill a Mockingbird, what does the children's father shoot in the street?
A rabid dog
A rabid dog, and the children learn to their surprise that their father was once known as One-Shot Finch.
Q 07Which future Oscar winner first appeared on the big screen as Boo Radley in the 1962 To Kill a Mockingbird?
Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall's screen time was brief, but his recluse is the man who finally rescues the children from their attacker.
Q 08In To Kill a Mockingbird, why is it called a sin to kill a mockingbird?
It only sings
It only sings, harming no one, neighbour Miss Maudie explains, so the bird comes to stand for innocence in the novel.
Q 09What happened to the two black clients Lee's father once defended on murder charges?
Both were hanged
Both were hanged, and that failed defence reportedly helped inspire the doomed trial at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Q 10Which writer adapted To Kill a Mockingbird into the 2018 Broadway play starring Jeff Daniels?
Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin's script drew a 2018 lawsuit from Lee's estate, which said his version of the hero strayed from the book; the play still opened that December.
Q 11In To Kill a Mockingbird, where does the reclusive neighbour leave small gifts for the children?
In a tree
In a tree: the feared recluse, Boo Radley, turns out to be the man who saves the children from Bob Ewell's attack.
Q 12Which To Kill a Mockingbird character was based on Lee's childhood friend next door?
Dill Harris
Dill Harris was Lee's portrait of Truman Capote, returning the favour after he wrote her into his first novel as the tomboy Idabel.
Q 13Which Capote book did Lee help research in Holcomb, Kansas?
In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood began as what Capote and Lee thought would be a magazine article on a small Kansas town's response to a family's murder.
Q 21Biographer Charles Shields says Lee once did what with her manuscript in frustration?
Threw it out the window into the snow
She threw it out the window into the snow, then called her editor in tears and was told to march outside and pick up the pages.
Q 22In To Kill a Mockingbird, what breaks up the lynch mob?
A child's small talk
A child's small talk: the narrator chats with a mob leader about his son, her classmate, until the men give up and leave.
Q 23About how many copies of To Kill a Mockingbird have been sold worldwide?
About 40 million
Q 14In To Kill a Mockingbird, how does the sheriff say Bob Ewell died?
He fell on his own knife
He fell on his own knife, the sheriff insists, to spare the shy recluse who really killed Ewell while saving the children.
Q 15What was Rammer Jammer, which Lee edited at the University of Alabama?
A humour magazine
A humour magazine: Lee rose to become its editor, yet she left the university without finishing her degree.
Q 16At which English university did Lee attend a 1948 summer school?
Oxford
Oxford's summer school came as she was losing interest in law, and soon after returning home she dropped out to become a writer.
Q 17What jobs did Lee take after moving to New York in 1949?
Bookstore, then airline reservations
Bookstore, then airline reservations work paid the bills by day, leaving her nights free for writing.
Q 18What Christmas gift from friends in 1956 let Lee write full-time?
A year's wages
A year's wages came from friends Michael and Joy Brown, who'd had a good year and wanted to give her a full, fair chance to write.
Q 19Who was Lee's editor at Lippincott who guided To Kill a Mockingbird through its drafts?
Tay Hohoff
Tay Hohoff led Lee through two years of rewrites, turning a draft she saw as 'a series of anecdotes' into a finished novel.
Q 20What was the title of the manuscript Lee first delivered to her agent in 1957?
Go Set a Watchman
Go Set a Watchman was reworked into To Kill a Mockingbird, then surfaced in 2015, sold as a new novel though it was an early draft.
About 40 million copies have sold, yet local school boards have often tried to ban it.
Q 24Which 1931 Alabama trial does the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird parallel?
The Scottsboro Boys case
The Scottsboro Boys case saw nine black youths tried for allegedly raping two white women, yet Lee's novel was not based directly on it.
Q 25Who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1962 film of To Kill a Mockingbird?
Horton Foote
Horton Foote's script won the Oscar, and Lee visited the set during filming and supported the project.
Q 26Who won the Best Actor Oscar for the 1962 film of To Kill a Mockingbird?
Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck's role as the lawyer father also won him the lifelong friendship of the famously private Lee.
Q 27In which fictional Alabama town is To Kill a Mockingbird set?
Maycomb
Maycomb is set in the Depression-era 1930s, and Lee's 2015 novel brings the heroine back there as a grown woman two decades later.
Q 28In To Kill a Mockingbird, what does the narrator dress up as for the school pageant?
A ham
A ham, and she's still stuck inside the wire costume when Bob Ewell attacks, unable to see what is happening.
Q 29In To Kill a Mockingbird, what addiction does the cranky neighbour Mrs. Dubose fight before she dies?
Morphine
Morphine: she breaks the habit knowing she is dying, which the children's father calls real courage, beginning when you know you're licked.
Q 30Lee's unfinished book The Reverend was reportedly what kind of work?
A true-crime account
A true-crime account of an Alabama preacher suspected of killing five people, who was himself later killed.