Harper Lee: US author of To Kill a Mockingbird dies aged 89

BBC | 19 February 2016

Image copyrightGetty Images

Image captionHarper Lee only ever released two novels - To Kill A Mockingbird and Go Set A Watchman

Harper Lee, the reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has died at the age of 89.

The news was confirmed by the mayor's office in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.

The novelist was born Nelle Harper Lee on 28 April 1926.

In 1960, she published To Kill a Mockingbird, a huge critical and commercial success which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A sequel Go Set a Watchman, was published in 2015.

To Kill a Mockingbird sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

Obituary: Harper Lee

Lee was born 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She was the youngest of four children of lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee.

She was a guardedly private person, respected and protected by residents of her town, rarely giving interviews.

"The world has lost a brilliant mind and a great writer," said Spencer Madrie, owner of Ol' Curiosities and Book Shoppe, a small, independent book store in Lee's hometown that focuses largely on Lee's works.

"We will remember Harper Lee for her candour, her talent, and the truths she gave the world, perhaps before the world was ready. We are grateful to have had a connection to an author who offered so much.

"There will always be something missing from Monroeville and the world at large in the absence of Harper Lee."

Live: Tributes paid to Harper Lee

The author Malorie Blackman posted "Harper Lee R.I.P." on her Twitter account.

Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted: "Rest in peace, Harper Lee. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

Image copyrightReuters

Image captionHarper Lee made a rare public appearance in 2007 to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George Bush

To Kill a Mockingbird - at a glance

In the small fictional town of Maycomb in the depression-ravaged American South, a black man named Tom Robinson is falsely accused of raping a white woman.

A lawyer named Atticus Finch defends Robinson in court. The frenzy stirred up by the case and her father's quest for justice are seen through the eyes of Finch's six-year-old daughter Scout.

The book explores issues of race, class and the loss of innocence.

To Kill a Mockingbird

5,000

copies in initial print run

$20,000

value of a signed first-edition copy

• Over 40m global sales
• 40 languages into which it has been translated
• 8 Oscar nominations for 1962 film version
• 3 Oscar wins

Getty

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." - Atticus Finch to Scout.

"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived." - Scout Finch.

The novel is currently being adapted for the stage.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionThe sequel contains some of the same characters as To Kill a Mockingbird, including Scout and Atticus Finch

The manuscript for the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set A Watchman was discovered and published in 2015.

Many bookshops remained open all night to cope with demand.

The book is set 20 years after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird - although Lee actually wrote Go Set a Watchman first.

Watchman contains some of the same characters as Mockingbird, including Scout and her father Atticus Finch.

The publication proved controversial as early reviewers noted that Atticus expresses racist views in the story.