Posted on March 13, 2019 at 2:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

Monroeville, Alabama, was thrilled to be part of Harper Lee’s life.

The feeling was not mutual.

A letter from the To Kill a Mockingbird author to her friend Charles Weldon Carruth, recently sold at auction, contains a litany of complaints about Monroeville.

Specifically, Lee resented how the town was exploiting its connection to her to rake in tourism revenue, according to the Guardian.

“The hypocrites in charge, not a one of whom I know, say they are doing this to ‘honour’ me. What they are doing is trying to drown me in their own bad taste, and are embarrassing me beyond endurance,” she wrote in 1993 to Carruth.

(It makes one wonder what Lee would have thought of the Mockingbird play brouhaha ... )

The letter is part of a larger collection of papers, including caricatures of Carruth, that sold for nearly £20,000 (about $26,400).

Read more scathing excerpts in the Guardian.

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