Harper Lee, one of America’s most celebrated novelists whose masterpiece “To Kill a Mockingbird” was read by millions worldwide, has died, her publisher and officials confirmed today.
Advertisement
Harper Lee was hailed a brilliant writer and an extraordinary woman as tributes poured in following the death of the author of To Kill a Mockingbird at age 89.
In 1964, she said in a rare confidence that she was not expecting it. According to The Telegraph, however, Lee’s lawyer said last July that she had found more pages in Lee’s safety deposit box, where she claimed to have found the Go Set a Watchman manuscript earlier.
The statement says the family will hold a private funeral service in the coming days.
Lee’s first novel “To Kill a Mockingbird“, which was published in 1960, tells a story of a girl nicknamed Scout and her family who got caught up in a case of racial injustice in the U.S. South during Depression era. 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. Many Harper Lee fans expressed concern that the novel would damage the author’s reputation in the future.
While reading the book, I remember looking at the characters through the eyes of Scout, feeling for Atticus, eager about Boo Radley and hating their small town for the atrocities towards an innocent man. That was the power of Lee’s words-she could influence the world of a teenager. “And in a way, To Kill a Mockingbird speaks to both those things”, Murphy says.
And again over the years each time I’ve gone back to the book or watched the movie.
Lee tweaked names and locations in her hometown of Monroeville to come up with the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. “And then we became friends with her”. But we know that’s not true.
“I would have loved to have met her”, said Walz.
“Watchman” includes numerous same characters found in “To Kill A Mockingbird“.
Wayne Flynt, a Lee friend and historian, said those mixed feelings were evident when he visited Lee last week.
A spokeswoman from the Harper Collins publishing house in NY said she died peacefully Thursday night.
Advertisement
“I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird”, Lee told The New York Times. It’s also where her father, A.C. Lee, worked as an attorney and became her model for fictional lawyer Atticus Finch.
