Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird Author Dies

Harper Lee was as the White House put it, a “giant of American literature”.

Lee, who passed away in her sleep on Friday age 89, drew inspiration from her hometown of Monroeville for the fictionalized Maycomb, the setting in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a 2006 speech he gave, entitled, “Atticus inside ourselves”.

Harper Lee, the writer of the great American novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, died last night at the age of 89. But in “Watchman,” an older Atticus had racial views that left the grown-up Scout greatly disillusioned.

“For ‘Go Set a Watchman”, there was no one you were cheering for”, he said.

For many years, Lee, a shy woman with an engaging Southern drawl who never married, lived quietly and privately, always turning down interview requests.

Her casket was taken by silver hearse to the adjacent cemetery where her father, A.C. Lee and sister, Alice Lee, are buried.

Flynt and Randall said they had recently visited Lee at the Monroeville assisted living facility where she had lived for several years because of declining health.

“Yes, I would have liked to see the black characters displayed with a lot more dimension”, he said. The southern town was home to childhood friends Truman Capote and Lee, giving rise to its self-given nickname of the literary capital of the South.

Lee herself became more mysterious as her book became more famous.

And in 1991, when people were asked about books that had affected their lives, Mockingbird was second only to the Bible.

Lee’s state of mind would become an issue previous year when plans were announced to publish “Go Set a Watchman”. But as Scout’s favourite Uncle Jack tells her, “Every man’s island, every man’s watchman, is his conscience”, just like her father did when she was little, and that’s Harper Lee’s biggest legacy: inculcating a deep sense of right and wrong in every individual.

“For her to so to speak call out her society for its injustices that was a monumental achievement”, she said.

“I want you to say exactly that”, Flynt quoted Lee as saying at the time.

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. “It’s been a gift to the entire world”, he said. Bush said during a statement that he and his wife, Laura Bush, a former librarian, mourned Lee. Lee, the elusive author of best-seller “To Kill a Mockingbird”, died Friday, Feb. 19, according to her publisher Harper Collins. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “Lee had a way of telling stories that does have an influence and resonates with so many Americans”. He said President Barack Obama had great respect for her. “Not one thing more, and not one thing less”.

“This is beyond the borders of Monroe County and Monroeville itself”, Anton said of Lee’s death.