TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD Author Settles Lawsuit Against Museum

Harper Lee, author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" has settled a lawsuit against the Monroe County Heritage Museum for selling souvenirs featuring her name and title of her book.

No details of the settlement were revealed and the lawyers for the museum and Lee refused to comment.

The lawsuit said the museum wrongly used the title of the book as a website address without any compensation. The museum earned more than $500,000 in 2012. Goforth previously said the museum earned $28,566 from merchandise sales that year.

The museum has changed its website name to http://www.monroecountymuseum.org . The site claims the gift shop "offers dozens of custom items available ONLY in Monroeville."

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explains the novel's impact by writing, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism."