The family of To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee, who has died aged 89, has said she was a “generous soul” and that they will “miss her dearly”. Lee was planning to tell the story of one lawyer’s interesting case – about a reverend whose insured family members dropped like flies in mysterious accidents – and she even moved to lawyer Tom Radney’s hometown in Alexander City, Alabama, to research the book. The narrator of the novel is his daughter, nicknamed Scout.
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It’s his copy of To Kill A Mockingbird.
The enormous success of the film version of the novel, released in 1962 with Gregory Peck starring the role of Atticus Finch, a lawyer from a small town in the South who defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, only added to Lee’s fame and fanned the expectations for her next novel.
Rest in peace, Harper Lee. When the Library of Congress did a 1991 survey on books that have affected people’s lives, To Kill a Mockingbird was second only to the Bible.
All she hoped for was a little encouragement from writing it.
“She was an extremely private person, and my policy is that I don’t tell anybody what anybody buys at the bookstore”, he said.
“Mockingbird”, for which she was given an advance of $1,000 plus 15pc of royalties, spent 98 weeks on “The New York Times” bestseller list and earned her a profile in “Life” magazine. From there was born To Kill A Mockingbird, with the same characters.
“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”.
“I think the book was so special, everybody wanted to be like Atticus (Finch). We have lost a great writer, a great friend and a beacon of integrity”. She was also a descendant of General Lee, commander of the Confederate troops during the Civil War.
She counted author Truman Capote among her childhood friends, and worked as an assistant on his novel “In Cold Blood”, which examined a multiple killing in Kansas, and was dedicated to Lee.
The owner of Atticus and Boo Radley’s said he was very sad to hear about the passing of such a legendary author that has had such an impact on him.
She renounces in 1949 to law school to try his luck in the literature in NY.
It’s now the Monroe County Heritage Museum, which is full of tributes to Lee and her work. The author of “To Kill a Mocking Bird”, who died at the age of 89, was once declared by the United States president as an author “who changed America for the better” with her works, reports the Guardian.
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Reporting also shows that, following the release of “Mockingbird”, when anticipation grew for another book from Harper Lee (which never came), she and the publisher did not consider “Watchman” a viable contender – though, of course, now it has reached the public’s hands.
