Harper Lee, whose 1961 novel To Kill a Mockingbird became a national institution and the defining text on the racial troubles of the American deep south, has died at the age of 89.

Lee, or Nelle as she was known to those close to her, had lived for several years in a nursing home less than a mile from the house in which she had grown up in Monroeville, Alabama – the setting for the fictional Maycomb of her famous book. The town’s mayor, Mike Kennedy, confirmed the author’s death.

Until last year, Lee had been something of a one-book literary wonder. To Kill a Mockingbird, her 1961 epic narrative about small-town lawyer Atticus Finch’s battle to save the life of a black resident threatened by a racist mob, sold more than 40 million copies around the world and earned her a Pulitzer prize.

From that point the author consistently avoided public attention and insisted that she had no intention of publishing further works. But amid considerable controversy it was revealed a year ago that a second novel had been discovered which was published as Go Set a Watchman in July 2015.

Lee was born in Monroeville in 1926 and grew up under the forced racial divide of segregation. As a child she shared summers with another aspiring writer, Truman Capote, who came to stay in the house next door to hers and who later invited her to accompany him to Holcomb, Kansas to help him research his groundbreaking 1966 crime book In Cold Blood.

(The Guardian)