American writer Harper Lee, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ author, dies at 89

Acclaimed American writer Harper Lee, author of the classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” died Friday in Alabama, local media and her publishing house said. She was 89.

Sources close to the novelist said she died in the town of Monroeville, her place of birth and residence for most of her life.

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of our beloved author Harper Lee. She died peacefully this morning at the age of 89,” HarperCollins Publishers said in a statement on its Web site.

“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. I will always cherish the time I spent with her,” Michael Morrison, president and publisher of HarperCollins US General Books Group and Canada, was quoted as saying.

Lee suffered a stroke in 2007 and had been in poor health ever since.

She is best known for “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a novel about a lawyer in a prejudiced Depressionera Alabama town who defends a black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman.

An instant critical and popular success, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 and also was made into a highly successful film starring Gregory Peck.

The author did not publish any other works for several decades, but in February 2015 Lee said that her friend and attorney Tonja Carter had recently discovered a work, titled “Go Set a Watchman,” that was a sequel of sorts to her celebrated debut.

That sequel, set in the 1950s and published in July 2015, stunned many readers by portraying the saintly lawyer from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch, as a racist.