What major literary prize did To Kill a Mockingbird win in 1961?

To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. The award recognized Harper Lee's 1960 novel, which had quickly become a major commercial and literary success.

The Pulitzer was presented for the novel's treatment of childhood, morality, racial injustice, and the pressures of conformity in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb. Scout Finch narrates the story as she gradually begins to understand the injustice surrounding Tom Robinson's trial.

The prize helped establish Lee as a major American author, although she remained highly private and published very little afterward. To Kill a Mockingbird was her only published book for decades, until Go Set a Watchman appeared in 2015.

A common mix-up is the year: Pulitzer listings identify the award with 1961, while the novel itself was published in 1960. The honor was also not the National Book Award, Booker Prize, or Nobel Prize; it was specifically the Pulitzer Prize in the Fiction category.