In a days’ time, 29 letters written by the novelist Harper Lee will be offered for sale. The auction, which is due to take place just over a month after her death, is perhaps the first indication of many that Lee resides, posthumously, on the troublesome borderline between literature and celebrity.

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Some of the letters were written to friends in Alabama, Doris and Bill Leapard, both of whom are now dead. Others were written to a longtime fan, Don Salter. Many of them have come up for sale before and failed to find a buyer. Another set of letters, auctioned by Christies just before the much-anticipated publication of her second novel, Go Set A Watchman, last year, also failed to sell. It was unclear whether the owner of the letters had set a high reserve price, or whether widespread publicity about the unseemliness of the sale had put off potential buyers. She would not have been happy that her private correspondence was being traded, her publisher was quoted as saying; many of her friends said they wouldn’t dream of doing anything of the kind.

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