What is the name of the fictional town in Alabama where To Kill a Mockingbird is set? The town is Maycomb.
Maycomb is a fictional Alabama county seat where Scout Finch narrates the story of her childhood. The novel places its events in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when the town’s social divisions and racial prejudices shape everyday life. Although Maycomb is invented, it closely reflects Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.
The town’s courthouse, residential streets, school, and close-knit neighborhoods provide the setting for the novel’s major episodes. The trial of Tom Robinson brings Maycomb’s racial hierarchy into public view, while Scout and Jem’s experiences with Boo Radley reveal how quickly the community turns rumors into assumptions.
Maycomb is sometimes confused with real Alabama cities such as Mobile, Montgomery, or Selma. Those cities exist in Alabama, but none is the fictional town where the novel’s central characters live. Maycomb is best understood as Lee’s literary version of a small Southern town.