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Harper Lee, whose 1961 novel To Kill a Mockingbird on the racial troubles of the American deep south, has died at the age of 89.
Until last year, Lee had been something of a one-book literary legend. To kill a Mockingbird sold more than 40 million copies around the world and earned her a Pulitzer prize, remaining a towering presence in American literature. Another novel, Go Set A Watchman, was controversially published in July 2015 as a “sequel” to Mockingbird, though it was later confirmed to be Mockingbird's first draft.
But from the moment Mockingbird was published to almost instant success, the author consistently avoided public attention. Lee had lived for several years in a nursing home near the house in which she had grown up in Monroeville, Alabama—the setting for Maycomb of her famous book. Her neighbor for 40 years, Sue Sellers, said, “She was such a private person. All she wanted was privacy, but she didn't get much. There was always somebody following her around.”
James Naughtie, BBC Books Editor, commented on the novels of Harper Lee: “I think she stands, particularly among American readers, as someone who shone a light into a very dark place. She was writing at a time when people were beginning to lift the lid on everything in the South which they'd chosen not to understand. That all changed in the 1960s. So I think her status for writing that book in its extraordinarily direct way will remain.
