Harper Lee , whose 1961 novel To Kill a Mockingbird became a national institution and the defining text on the racial troubles of the American deep south, has died at the age of 89.<br />Lee, or Nelle as she was known to those close to her, had lived for several years in a nursing home less than a mile from the house in which she had grown up in Monroeville, Alabama - the setting for the fictional Maycomb of her famous book.<br />To Kill a Mockingbird, her 1961 epic narrative about small-town lawyer Atticus Finch's battle to save the life of a black resident threatened by a racist mob, sold more than 40 million copies around the world and earned her a Pulitzer prize.
