Harper Lee, Author Of 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' Dies At 89
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Harper Lee, author of the American classic "To Kill a Mockingbird," has died. She was 89.
Lee died peacefully Thursday, publisher HarperCollins said in a statement Friday. It did not give any other details about how she died. She reportedly passed away in her hometown of Monroeville.
"We have lost a great writer, a great friend and a beacon of integrity," Andrew Nurnberg, her agent, said in a statement.
"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. She lived her life the way she wanted to -- in private -- surrounded by books and the people who loved her,'' Michael Morrison, head of HarperCollins U.S. general books group, said in the statement.
Much of Lee's story is the story of "Mockingbird,'' and how she responded to it. She wasn't a bragger, like Norman Mailer, or a drinker, like William Faulkner, or a recluse or eccentric. By the accounts of friends and Monroeville townsfolk, she was a warm, vibrant and witty woman who enjoyed life, played golf, read voraciously and got about to plays and concerts. She just didn't want to talk about it before an audience.
"To Kill a Mockingbird,'' published in 1960, is the story of a girl nicknamed Scout growing up in a Depression-era Southern town. A black man has been wrongly accused of raping a white woman, and Scout's father, the resolute lawyer Atticus Finch, defends him despite threats and the scorn of many.
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The novel was an immediate success after its publication, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for fiction a year later. In 1962, it was turned into an Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck as Atticus.
As the civil rights movement grew, the novel inspired a generation of young lawyers, was assigned in high schools all over the country and was a popular choice for citywide, or nationwide, reading programs.
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By 2015, its sales were reported by HarperCollins to be more than 40 million worldwide, making it one of the most widely read American novels of the 20th century. When the Library of Congress did a survey in 1991 on books that have affected people's lives, "To Kill a Mockingbird'' was second only to the Bible.
A new play adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird'' will land on Broadway during the 2017-18 season under the direction of Tony Award-winner Bartlett Sher, written by Oscar-winner written by Aaron Sorkin.
As CBS's Maurice Dubois reported, "Go Set A Watchman," a prequel to "To Kill A Mockingbird," was published last year.
"Watchman'' was written before "Mockingbird'' but was set 20 years later, using the same location and many of the same characters. Readers and reviewers were disheartened to find an Atticus who seemed nothing like the hero of the earlier book. The man who defied the status quo in "Mockingbird'' was now part of the mob in "Watchman,'' denouncing the Supreme Court's ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional and denouncing blacks as unfit to enjoy full equality.
But despite unenthusiastic reviews and questions whether Lee was well enough to approve the publication, "Watchman'' jumped to the top of best-seller lists within a day of its announcement and remained there for months.
Born in Monroeville, Alabama, Nelle Harper Lee was known to family and friends as Nelle -- the name of a relative, Ellen, spelled backward. Like Atticus Finch, her father was a lawyer and state legislator. One of her childhood friends was Truman Capote, who lived with relatives next door to the Lees for several years.
A book about Lee in 2006 and two films about Capote brought fresh attention to their friendship, including her contributions to Capote's "In Cold Blood,'' the classic "nonfiction novel'' about the murder of a Kansas farm family.
Capote became the model for Scout's creative, impish and loving friend Dill. In the novel, Dill is described as "a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.''
Lee said in the 1960s that she was working on a second novel, but over time it dropped from view and never reached a publisher.
Lee researched another book, a non-fiction account of a bizarre murder case in rural east Alabama, but abandoned the project in the 1980s.
Lee, who attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery as a freshman, transferred the next year to the University of Alabama, where she wrote and became editor of the campus literary magazine. After studying to be a lawyer like her father and older sister, Lee left the university before graduating, heading to New York to become a writer, as Capote already had done.
Lee worked as an airlines reservation clerk in New York City during the early 1950s, writing on the side. Finally, with a Christmas loan from friends, she quit to write full time, and the first draft of "To Kill a Mockingbird'' reached its publisher in 1957.
The manuscript, according to the publishing house, arrived under the title "Atticus.'' The title later became "To Kill a Mockingbird,'' referring to an old saying that it was all right to kill a blue jay but a sin to kill a mockingbird, which gives the world its music.
For most of her life, Lee divided her time between New York City, where she wrote the novel in the 1950s, and her hometown of Monroeville, which inspired the book's fictional Maycombe. Growing up, Lee attended Huntingdon College and studied law at the University of Alabama.
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