50 free To Kill a Mockingbird trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This To Kill a Mockingbird trivia quiz covers Harper Lee's 1960 novel from the first summer with Dill to Scout standing on the Radley porch. It asks about the people of Maycomb (Atticus, Calpurnia, Miss Maudie, Mrs. Dubose, the Ewells and the Cunninghams), the mad dog, the knothole gifts, the lynch mob Scout talks down, the trial of Tom Robinson and the Halloween night that ends the book. It also asks where the mockingbird of the title comes in. Beyond the pages it covers what fed the story: Lee's father the lawyer, her childhood neighbour Truman Capote, the Walter Lett case her father's newspaper reported, the editor who turned Go Set a Watchman into the book we know, the Pulitzer, the bans and the 2015 release of that early draft. The 1962 film gets its share too, from Gregory Peck's Oscar to Robert Duvall's silent debut. Roughly a third of the questions are easy for anyone who read it in school, a third need a careful reader's memory, and the rest reward people who know their Lippincott from their Lamb. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, its author and its adaptations before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year was To Kill a Mockingbird first published?
1960
It won the Pulitzer Prize the following year, while it was in its 41st week on the bestseller list.
Q 02What is the name of the fictional Alabama town where the novel is set?
Maycomb
It is the county seat of a county of the same name; the story runs across three Depression years, 1933 to 1935.
Q 03What is the narrator Scout's real first name?
Jean Louise
She is six when the book opens and lives with her brother Jem and their widowed lawyer father.
Q 04Which member of the Finch household is a Black cook who has helped raise the children for years?
Calpurnia
She once punishes Scout for embarrassing the poorer Walter Cunningham at the family table, and Atticus backs her judgment.
Q 05What is the nickname of Charles Baker Harris, the boy who visits each summer?
Dill
Lee modelled him on her childhood next-door neighbour Truman Capote, then known as Truman Persons.
Q 06Which famous writer was the real-life model for Dill?
Truman Capote
He lived next door to Lee with his aunts while his mother was in New York, and she later helped him research In Cold Blood.
Q 07What is the first name of the reclusive neighbour known as "Boo" Radley?
Arthur
Many of Maycomb's adults have not seen him for years, and the children spin rumours about why he stays inside.
Q 08Who is Atticus appointed to defend?
Tom Robinson
Judge Taylor makes the appointment, and Atticus agrees to defend the man to the best of his ability despite the town's disapproval.
Q 09Who is the young white woman whose accusation leads to the trial?
Mayella Ewell
The trial reveals she made advances toward the accused and was beaten by her father for it.
Q 10How does Scout break up the lynch mob that confronts Atticus outside the jail?
By chatting to a classmate's father
Recognising Mr. Cunningham and talking to him heart-to-heart shames the men into dispersing.
Q 11From where do Jem, Scout and Dill watch the trial?
The colored balcony
The Rev. Sykes, pastor of Calpurnia's church, invites them up when there are no seats left on the main floor.
Q 12Which animal must Atticus shoot in the street, read by critics as a symbol of facing prejudice alone?
A rabid dog
The children discover their mild-mannered father is a crack shot; scholar Carolyn Jones sees the dog as Maycomb's prejudice.
Q 13Which elderly neighbour fighting a morphine addiction gives Jem a lesson in courage?
Mrs. Dubose
She also scolds Scout for not wearing a dress and insults Atticus for defending Tom Robinson.
Q 21Harper Lee's father, the model for Atticus, never took another criminal case after what happened in 1919?
Two Black men he defended were convicted and hanged
He was also the editor and publisher of the Monroeville newspaper, and the town's real-life echoes run through the book.
Q 22Which real Alabama man, accused of rape near Monroeville when Lee was ten, is a suspected model for the novel's accused?
Walter Lett
Her father's newspaper covered the trial; his death sentence was commuted after letters claimed he was falsely accused.
Q 23Which editor at J. B. Lippincott guided Lee's early manuscript into To Kill a Mockingbird?
Q 14After the trial, who vows revenge and spits in Atticus's face?
Bob Ewell
He also tries to break into the judge's house and menaces Tom Robinson's widow before attacking the children.
Q 15Jem and Scout are attacked while walking home from what event?
A school pageant
Scout has fallen asleep backstage and missed her cue as a ham; the attack happens on the dark walk home.
Q 16What injury does Jem suffer in the attack?
A fractured arm
He is knocked unconscious, and a mysterious man carries him home; Scout realises it is Boo Radley.
Q 17How does Sheriff Tate decide to report Bob Ewell's death in order to protect Boo?
He fell on his own knife
Atticus initially assumes Jem was responsible; the sheriff is certain it was Boo and refuses to expose him.
Q 18Why, as Miss Maudie explains to Scout, is it a sin to kill a mockingbird?
They just sing for people's enjoyment
Miss Maudie gives Scout the explanation after Atticus lets the children shoot bluejays with their Christmas air rifles.
Q 19Which 19th-century essayist supplies the novel's epigraph, "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once"?
Charles Lamb
Legal scholars have written more about the book than literary scholars, according to Claudia Durst Johnson.
Q 20Where did Lee take the surname Finch from?
Her mother's maiden name
Songbirds run through the whole book, and the mockingbird is the key motif of that theme.
Tay Hohoff
She saw "the spark of the true writer" in the draft then titled Go Set a Watchman but judged it unfit for publication as it stood.
Q 24Which award did To Kill a Mockingbird win in 1961?
The Pulitzer Prize
The award stunned Lee; the book was also named Paperback of the Year by Bestsellers magazine.
Q 25Harper Lee gave her last interview to a journalist in which year?
1964
She remained fiercely guarded about her private life until her death in February 2016.
Q 26In a 1964 interview, Lee said she aspired to be the Jane Austen of which place?
South Alabama
Like Austen, she challenged the social status quo and valued individual worth over social standing.
Q 27Which US president awarded Harper Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007?
George W. Bush
A year earlier the entire Notre Dame graduating class held up copies of the book as she received an honorary doctorate.
Q 28Go Set a Watchman, published in 2015, was what in relation to To Kill a Mockingbird?
An earlier draft
Completed in 1957, it follows an adult Scout visiting Maycomb from New York twenty years after the novel's events.
Q 29The title Go Set a Watchman comes from which book of the Bible?
Isaiah
The verse is quoted in the book's seventh chapter by the minister Mr. Stone.
Q 30Who played Atticus Finch in the 1962 film?
Gregory Peck
At his 2003 eulogy, Brock Peters quoted Lee: "Atticus Finch gave him an opportunity to play himself".