Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, spent her final months inventing rhyming couplets with friends and had a "brilliant" mind to the end, her loved ones have said.Joy Brown, 88, and Nelle, as Lee was affectionately known, whiled away a recent afternoon "taking it in turns" to write rhyming lines about a Robert Louis Stevenson poem."She had such wit," recalled Brown, one of the 89-year-old's closest friends. "Her mind was brilliant until the end."Brown spoke in Monroeville, Lee's Alabama hometown, which inspired the characters and setting for her seminal novel. Her family and friends gathered in the town to pay their respects after her death on Friday.Lee's 1960 classic novel about Atticus Finch, a lawyer who stands firm against racism in the depression-era Deep South, has gained worldwide acclaim, selling more than 40million copies.But its author shunned the limelight in favour of a quiet life among a close-knit circle of friends.Brown and her husband, Michael, gave Lee a year's worth of wages as a Christmas gift in the late 1950s, giving the young writer time to craft To Kill A Mockingbird."The book was turned down by nine publishers; nobody expected it to do so well," Brown said. "When it did, Nelle gave some interviews and she helped create the film about it, but then she said, 'Enough, I want my life back'."She played golf and sometimes journalists would come out to the golf course to try to interview her, but when she heard they were coming she'd hide."So complete was Lee's resolve to keep a low profile that, when a second work, Go Set A Watchman, was printed last year, there was speculation that the ailing author had been coerced into publishing it by her lawyer, Tonja Carter, who found the manuscript.Some of Lee's friends said this rumour was false."Tonja was accused of manipulating Nelle," said George Landegger, a friend of the writer. "But Nelle could not be manipulated."Although she avoided the public world, Lee was anything but a recluse. The author was often seen in Monroeville having breakfast in the Courthouse Cafe, near the court that was made famous as a set for the film of her novel.Landegger said that, in her retirement, she chose to spend her final years in a small care home on the outskirts of Monroeville."It was a very nice home where a man would come every night and play the piano and there was a certain social life," he said."She had this wonderful childish twinkle in her eye and she defied conventional mores."Just as she lived her life, Lee desired a hidden death. On Friday, when she died, Landegger, who lives in New York, received a phone call at 4am to be told the news but was "sworn to secrecy".The town that Lee made famous honoured her with the desired restraint. Flags were at half mast, a single set of tulips lay in the arms of a statue of a child reading her book, and a select group of close friends and family gathered in the restaurant to share memories of her.Her friends had kept quiet for so long, Landegger said. "But now we are free at last to speak about her as she deserves." ..