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AUTHOR HARPER LEE has died at the aged of 89.
The Pulitzer Prize winning writer of To Kill A Mockingbird died this morning in her hometown of Monroeville, according to reports from her native Alabama.
Publisher Random House has now confirmed her death.
The news comes just over seven months after her second novel, Go Set A Watchman, was published 55 years after her first.
To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the most famous novels of the 20th century and Lee’s reluctance to speak publicly in the half-century after it was published only added to its cultural impact.
To Kill A Mockingbird told the story of a young girl named Scout who observed the racism in her Alabama hometown during the trial of black man for raping a white woman.
The young girl in the story would be a contemporary of Lee’s, and as a result she was always closely associated with her famous literary creation.
A film of the same name was released in 1962 with Gregory Peck starring as Scout’s father, the lawyer Atticus Finch.
In her later years, Lee was at the centre of a legal battle over the copyright to her work.
Particularly, whether or not she consented to the release of the follow-up she had written almost 60 years previously.
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“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” One of the only things I remember from Leaving Cert English!
RIP
Good memory
I teach her novel regularly to Junior Cert students and they still love it. Very sad to see her pass on
I read it for the first time when my son was doing Junior Cert – I am not sure which of us hated it more! I am sorry she has died, but personally I don’t think she was a great writer.
Anyone who wants to understand race in the US should read Mockingbird. Amazing perspective. Unbelievably brave for it’s time. Still so relevant.
Rip
God be with the good oul days of the junior cert.. Rip
I still don’t know what a chifferobe is?
You likey do…there could be one among your gran’s furniture.
Spoiler alert… Teaches you nothing about killing mockingbirds!
Always thought Harpor Lee was a man :), there ya go, you learn something new everyday. Never read the book (obviously), but great b/w movie. RIP
2016 just keeps on taking.
Eh…she was 89, and hardly a household name.
Totally agree Pope, ridiculous comment.
Great author, great book
Just shows beckham didn’t invent the name harper!
No, and they never claimed to. Harper Beckham was named after Harper Lee because she is a favourite author of both of her parents. They said that when she was born.
To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the novels that had a major impact on me as a teenager. It was the novel studied at my school for Junior Cert English and it played an enormous role in shaping my sense of justice and equality.
It taught me that those in authority are not always right and that injustice should be challenged especially when it comes from prejudice and oppression.
For the first time, I learned to examine my own beliefs and prejudices and question them and that habit followed me into adulthood and led me to the activism I am still involved in today.
RIP Harper Lee, and thank you for helping me to be a better person!
Nice tribute.
Watched the film recently.
Great movie. Some fine acting right there.
My grandmother always says Gregory Peck asked her to marry him but she turned him down because she didn’t want to live in Hollywood so married my grandfather instead.
Then she looks sideways at gramps and rolls her eyes to heaven.
I’d wait for an official confirmation. She’s been reported dead before.
Mocking is catching.
Some believe TKaMB was actually ghost written by her good friend back in the day Truman Capote, seems strange it was over 50 years before she wrote another book, last year’s far inferior sequel ‘Go Set a Watchman’.
Just to clarify, over 50 years before it’s publication, she allegedly wrote it shortly after TKaMB, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was just a money spinning pot boiler ghost written before she popped her clogs.
Just to clarify, it was written before TKAMB.
Just to clarify, allegedly written – period. (whichever one)
Not a sequel, an early rejected draft of TKaM
I think the headline should be ” author of to kill a mocking bird was still alive until yesterday”
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