Harper Lee, Author of “To Kill a Mockingbird” Dead at Age 89

Harper Lee, the author of the classic American novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” has died at age 89, PPD confirms.

Lee, who won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “Mockingbird,” published just two novels in her lifetime. She released “Go Set a Watchman” in July 2015, more than 50 years after “To Kill a Mockingbird” hit bookshelves.

“Mockingbird,” which went on to become an American literature classic and sell more than 30 million copies in 18 languages, was voted Best Novel of the Century in a Library Journal poll in 1999. In 2006, British librarians ranked it ahead of the Bible as one book “every adult should read before they die.”

Harper Lee was actually born Nelle Harper Lee in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926. With the exception of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in 2007, she did her best to stay out of the public eye in her later years.