How successfully does To Kill a Mockingbird represent the time in which it was set?

Author Harper Lee, who just turned 88 years old this past
week, lived during the same time that To Kill a Mockingbird was
set. The story was based on her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, and Scout is a
representation of Lee's own tomboy childhood. Atticus is based on her lawyer father, and
Dill is based on Lee's friend, Truman Persons, who visited Monroeville each summer (and
later became a famous writer under the name Truman
Capote).

The book is a highly realistic look at the
Depression era Deep South. The characters are beautifully developed, show great depth,
and are very believable. Lee adds just the right touch of Southern slang and regional
dialect to her characters, and her detailed accounts of the slow life in the tiny
Alabama town of Maycomb makes it come to life. It becomes kind of an Every Town of the
South--one to which many Southerners who grew up during this time period can easily
relate. The racism, gossip and eccentricities that her characters exhibit show many
different sides to the town's inhabitants, and Lee's charming use of Scout as the
narrator--from both her youthful outlook and from her adult retrospective--maintains an
innocent feel that complements the primary theme of the
novel.

Because it takes place during the Depression, times
are hard, and nearly everyone is poor, as it was in most small, Southern towns during
the 1930s. But life goes on in a simple way, a reminder for new readers how life was
lived before TV, air conditioning, civil rights and computers.