Ultimate one-hit wonder Harper Lee released a statement this week further denying her cooperation with a newly released biography. Lee’s only book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill A Mockingbird, was published in 1960, with a film adaptation released two years later. Since then, the 88-year-old author has almost entirely avoided the press and has fiercely guarded her privacy, only agreeing this year for Mockingbird to be sold as an e-book. (It’s available in that format as of this week.)
In 2011, Penguin announced it would be publishing a Harper Lee biography penned by Chicago Tribune reporter Marja Mills, who had lived next door to Harper and her older sister, Alice, in Monroeville, Alabama. Mills claims the book was written “with direct access to Harper and Alice Lee [her sister] and their friends and family.” Lee denied that at the time, saying through her lawyers that she had neither authorized nor cooperated with any writers. In another statement released this week, Lee writes: