Harper Lee has been buried in a private funeral in her hometown in Alabama.

Close family and friends of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, who died on February 19 aged 89, gathered for a church service in Monroeville.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, about racial intolerance in the Deep South, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

The author released the sequel, Go Set a Watchman, in 2015 – 55 years later.

A statement from Harper Lee’s family confirmed the acclaimed author had died in her sleep on Friday morning.

The funeral service was held at First United Methodist Church in Monroeville on February 20, with history professor Wayne Flynt, a long-time friend, delivering the eulogy.

She was then laid to rest at her family burial plot, alongside her father and sister, Alice Lee.

Harper Lee used Monroeville as a model for the imaginary town of Maycomb, the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird.

To Kill a Mockingbird remains a towering presence in American literature, telling the tale of a white lawyer defending a black man accused of rape.