Tributes have poured in for Harper Lee, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird, who has passed away at the age of 89.
The famously-reclusive Lee published Mockingbird, the story of a lawyer defending a wrongly-accused black man in a Depression-era Southern town, in 1960.
It remained her only published novel until last year, with the surprise release of Go Set A Watchman, a book set after Mockingbird and dealing with the same characters, but written before.
Lee spent her final years in an assisted living facility in her home town of Monroeville, Alabama, and her state of mind at the time of Watchman‘s publication was the subject of debate.
Some speculated that a lawyer handling Lee’s affairs had coerced her into publishing the book after discovering the manuscript among her papers, but a state investigation found no evidence of this.
Tributes have since poured in for the beloved Lee, with everyone from Oprah and Reese Witherspoon to Apple CEO Tim Cook honouring her life and work:
Harper Lee my 1st favorite author! I always wanted to interview her. She said” honey I already said everything I had to say”. #RIPHarperLee
— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) February 19, 2016
She revealed it all…the glory and the fear and the hate and the beauty.
May she rest in peace. #HarperLee pic.twitter.com/3tfSEfSejx— Reese Witherspoon (@RWitherspoon) February 19, 2016
“You never understand a person until u consider things from his point of view- until u climb into his skin & walk around in it.”- #HarperLee
— Uzo Aduba (@UzoAduba) February 19, 2016
Rest in peace, Harper Lee. “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) February 19, 2016
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty.
