Harper Lee, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ author, has died at 89

Lee won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for “To Kill a Mockingbird”, which has become a classic in American literature. She alternated between living in a NY apartment and Monroeville, where she shared a home with her older sister, lawyer Alice Lee.

Conner’s experience, though – and the experiences of those who knew Lee personally – are exceptional.

The outpouring of affection for Lee, who died Friday at age 89 in Monroeville, Ala., makes it clear that generations of readers have embraced Mockingbird as a seminal American story, a touchstone of racial tolerance.

Her death was confirmed by the mayor’s office in Monroeville, and by a local Alabama news website.

Questions were immediate, but few could imagine the ensuing shock when Go Set a Watchman was released in July and Atticus Finch, Mockingbird’s heroic father figure, was revealed as a bigot.

Go Set a Watchman is disturbing, of course, and it’s not a very good book, although it has flashes of Lee’s humor and charm. She didn’t write the theatrical version of To Kill a Mockingbird and therefore never retained the rights to it. Those belong to Dramatic Publishing Company, a 131-year-old music and theater publishing house in IL owned by Christopher Sergel, the grandson of Mockingbird’s original playwright.

For decades she stayed out of the public eye, claiming to have said all she wanted in Mockingbird and vowing never to publish another book. Lee did not publish another novel for more than five decades, and she refused almost every attempt by the press to speak with her.

“The fact that she decided not to publish more, to stay out of the limelight, and to avoid interviews has made her a kind of legend”.

Despite her private nature, Lee regularly attended an annual luncheon at the University of Alabama to meet the winners of a high school essay contest on the subject of her book.

An English professor from UW-Madison told us that her passing is a loss to the literary community. “She was an intensely private person”.

The book featured her beloved Mockingbird characters, with the main protagonist, Jean Louise Finch, now an adult.

“She was coming up on 90 in a couple of months and we talked about her birthday, and I said my wife was going to bring a cake and we were going to put 90 candles on it and burn down the entire town of Monroeville as she tried to blow out the candles”, Flynt said. “Ms. Lee changed America for the better”, the President and First Lady said. “Harper Lee was ahead of her time and her masterpiece “To Kill a Mockingbird” prodded America to catch up with her”, he said.

Known as a tomboy as a child, she counted author Truman Capote among her childhood friends – and often stood up for him when he was picked on as a sissy.

She also an early flair for writing even though her family hoped she would follow her father into law.

In the years after the publication of “Mockingbird’ the town’s identity became intertwined with its most famous resident. We will miss her dearly”. “And in a way, To Kill a Mockingbird speaks to both those things”, Murphy says.

The president and publisher of HarperCollins US general books group and Canada, Michael Morrison, said: “The world knows Harper Lee was a brilliant writer but what many don’t know is that she was an extraordinary woman of great joyfulness, humility and kindness”.