Rare First Edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird Found in Oxfam Donation

A rare first edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has been discovered among donated books at an Oxfam shop in west London, before being acquired by the British Library for its national collection. The copy was found in a box of American books donated to Oxfam’s Portobello Road bookshop, where shop manager Olivia Haysman-Walker recognised it as a first US edition. The discovery came during the charity’s annual Second Hand September campaign, turning an ordinary donation into an unexpected literary find. Although the book’s dust jacket had become worn around the edges, its pages remained in what Haysman-Walker described as “beautiful condition.”

Published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird became one of the defining American novels of the twentieth century. Set in Alabama in 1934, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows lawyer Atticus Finch as he defends Tom Robinson, a Black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Through the perspective of childhood, Lee’s novel examines racial injustice, prejudice and moral courage, eventually selling more than 40 million copies worldwide and being translated into 40 languages. Lee, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, died in 2016 at the age of 89.

The journey of the Oxfam copy from a box of donated books into the British Library’s national collection adds another chapter to the history of a novel that has travelled far beyond its original setting. Haysman-Walker said the discovery demonstrated the unexpected treasures that can remain hidden among second-hand books and donations. The copy will now be preserved alongside other materials in Britain’s national library, transforming what might have been an unremarkable second-hand purchase into a piece of literary history.

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