Harper Lee book denial

HARPER LEE, the tight-lipped author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has issued a statement through her sister’s law firm saying that she had nothing to do with a forthcoming book written about her by a former Chicago Tribune reporter.

On Tuesday, Penguin Press announced that it had acquired the book, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee, a memoir by Marja Mills that it said was “written with direct access to Harper,” her sister Alice Lee “and their friends and family”.

Alice Lee’s law firm Barnett, Bugg, Lee & Carter in Monroeville, Alabama, issued a statement signed by Harper Lee saying: “Contrary to recent news reports, I have not willingly participated in any book written or to be written by Marja Mills. Neither have I authorised such a book.”

Miriam Altshuler, Ms Mills’s literary agent, said that Ms Mills “has the written support of Alice Lee and a lifelong family friend, and prior to Harper Lee’s stroke in 2007, she had the verbal support of Harper Lee”.