Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Harper Lee is being quietly laid to rest in a private funeral in her Alabama hometown of Monroeville, the inspiration for southern town depicted in “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
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A few dozen family members gathered Saturday at the First United Methodist Church in Monroeville, Alabama to hear a eulogy by her longtime friend and history professor, Wayne Flint.
When Lee’s follow-up novel was released previous year, Newland said the library made sure to have a number of copies of “Go Set a Watchman” in anticipation that people would want to read them.
News of Lee’s death spread widely on social media and tributes poured in from well-known figures, such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, who quoted the author in a tweet by saying, “Rest in peace, Harper Lee”.
Brynn Anderson/AP Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” has become one of the best-selling and most remembered American novels.
For decades it was thought Lee would never follow up Mockingbird – but in July previous year Go Set A Watchman was published.
Its unflinching examination of racial hatred in the South centred on lawyer Atticus Finch, the adored father of the young narrator Scout, who stood up to a white lynch mob and unsuccessfully defended a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Mr Bush, who awarded Lee a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, said she had been a voice for tolerance.
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. “Nothing can be more important than that and that’s what influenced me”, Jaffe said. 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. “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.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” is one of the most taught works of fiction ever written by an American. ‘She changed the world with ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. The novel was adapted into a Hollywood film which won three Oscars in 1963, including the best actor award for Gregory Peck for his portrayal of Finch, one of the best-loved characters in American fiction.
“She’s a part of it and always will be”, said Ann Mote, owner of the Ol’ Curiosites & Book Shoppe in Monroeville.
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It’s common knowledge in Monroeville that Lee did not like to talk about “Mockingbird“. “As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever”, he said. “That was a book about her dad”.
