A statement from Tonja Carter, Lee’s attorney in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, said Lee had “passed away early this morning in her sleep” there and that her death was unexpected.
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The author of To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee, has died aged 89.
Friends and family of author Harper Lee leave the First United Methodist Church after a private funeral service, Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016, in Monroeville, Ala.
“For ‘Go Set a Watchman“, there was no one you were cheering for”, he said.
The mood in this town of about 6,300 was muted, like Lee’s approach to celebrity, which she eschewed.
“You would see her around, but still we would honour her wishes of being a very private person”.
She expects those numbers to spike with the news of Harper Lee’s death.
A family friend, the Reverend Thomas Lane Butts, told an Australian interviewer that Lee had said she did not publish again because she did not want to endure the pressure and publicity of another book and because she had said all that she wanted to say. Afterward, her casket was taken by silver hearse to an adjacent cemetery where her father, A.C. Lee and sister, Alice Lee, are buried.
“That story, I’m glad it’s in just about all the schools now because it’s a story that everybody needs to hear”, he said.
In 1962, it was made into a film starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout.
“I think to kill a mockingbird will be read for ever and ever”, Theroux said.
The town this summer had a celebration for the release of “Go Set a Watchman” – Lee’s initial draft of the story that would become “Mockingbird” – even though many residents had ambivalent feelings about its release.
The country is mourning the loss of one of the most influential authors of our time.
In November 2007, Lee was invited to the White House to accept a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, who, at the time, called her book “a gift to the entire world”.
The Regina Public Library finds people of all ages continue to be impacted by the writing of Harper Lee. “We were all blessed by her life and her work as we are diminished by her passing”, said Cathy Randall, a friend of Lee’s for the past 30 years.
“Everybody from the newspaper boy to the checkout girl to the local minister will be remembering Harper Lee with fondness or with an axe to grind, depending on how they were treated”, said Lee biographer Charles Shields, whose “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee” was published in 2006 and will be reissued this year. “Rest in peace, Harper Lee”, he posted.
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Lee’s sister said the authors eventually fell out because Capote was jealous of Lee’s Pulitzer, which she won in 1961.
