Atticus Finch is a fictional character in author
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 1960,
To Kill a Mockingbird. A preliminary version of the character also appears in the novel
Go Set a Watchman, written in the mid 1950s but not published until 2015. Atticus is a lawyer and resident of the fictional Maycomb County, Alabama, and the father of Jeremy "Jem" Finch and Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. Lee based the character on her own father,
Amasa Coleman Lee, an Alabama lawyer, who, like Atticus, represented black defendants in a highly publicized criminal trial.
Book Magazines list of
The 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900 names Finch as the seventh best fictional character of 20th-century literature. In 2003, the
American Film Institute voted Atticus Finch, as portrayed by
Gregory Peck in the
1962 film adaptation, as the
greatest hero of all American cinema.