With the bestseller To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee taught the
world a lesson on tolerance. But the book’s success was too much, and
Lee withdrew from the public eye – until 2015 when a second book
stirred controversy. Now she has died at 89.
New York (dpa) – As her book made its way around the globe, Harper
Lee withdrew ever further from the world.
She wrote her international bestseller To Kill a Mockingbird in the
bustling metropolis of New York City. But as the 1960 novel became
ever more successful, crowned with a Pulitzer Prize and made into a
Hollywood film, Lee was back in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama,
in the deep South.
There she kept busy with church and civic activities, as the US media
came to learn. For decades the extremely shy and private writer
declined interviews and talk of a second book – until a new novel, Go
Set a Watchman, appeared last year.
The unknown grande dame of US literature died early Friday morning in
a nursing home in the small town of her birth. The author was in good
health up to the end, her family said. A private burial will take
place in coming days, as was her wish.
Lee’s agent, Andrew Nurnberg, praised the writer as a “beacon of
integrity.”
To Kill A Mockingbird has sold some 40 million copies.
The hero of the story, white lawyer Atticus Finch, defends an
African-American unjustly accused of rape, and in the process
provides his children, Jem and Scout, and an entire nation a lesson
on tolerance, charity and human rights.
To this day, the novel remains a standard in schools and is one of
the most widely read books of all time.
The film version, with Gregory Peck in the leading role, won three
Oscars.
Lee, born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, the youngest of four
children to a lawyer and a mother with depression, would never reveal
why she never wrote another novel. She made a few attempts over the
decades, but always gave up, US media reported.
All the more reason why the 2015 announcement of a new Harper Lee
book made waves. But Go Set a Watchman was not exactly a new work. It
was actually a first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, which she
eventually revised into the bestseller. Nevertheless, the book caused
a sensation and sold millions of copies – shocking many fans with a
racist version of Atticus Finch.
Lee, who in her childhood became a close friend of author Truman
Capote, was 89 at the time of her second book’s appearance, living in
the nursing home where she later passed away.
It remains unclear what she thought about the book’s late
publication. Previously she had strongly rebuffed the prospect of a
sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, and she engaged lawyers to fight a
2011 biography.
Many of Lee’s friends and acquaintances were openly suspicious
whether the elderly author had genuinely agreed to the publication.
The state of Alabama even initiated an investigation after an
anonymous tip suggested Lee had been manipulated.
But no malfeasance was discovered. And the publisher offered a fully
different picture of the situation.
“I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all
these years,” Lee said in a statement released by her publisher at
the time.
DPA
