Monroeville: The author of the American classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” Harper Lee has been laid to rest, in a private ceremony attended by only the closest of friends and family, a reflection of how she had lived.

Lee, who died Friday at age 89, was eulogised at a church in the small Alabama town of Monroeville yesterday, which the author used as a model for the imaginary town of Maycomb, the setting of Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Born Nelle Harper Lee on April 38, 1926, her first book “To Kill A Mockingbird” came out in 1960 and was a huge critical and commercial success. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was adapted into a film starring Gregory Peck.

Lee did not release another novel until last year, when “Go Set A Watchman”, which purports to be a sequel, but has its iconic characters in atypical representations. Research had showed it was actually a first draft.