American writer Harper Lee, who rose to fame a half-century ago with her first and only novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, denied that she had agreed to take part in a new biography about her life.

“Contrary to recent news reports, I have not willingly participated in any book written or to be written by Marja Mills. Neither have I authorised such a book,” the writer said in a statement.

“Any claims otherwise are false,” Ms Lee, 85, said in reference to the as-yet unpublished The Mockingbird Next Door by former Chicago Tribune reporter Marja Mills.

News reports earlier this week said that Ms Mills’s book had been written with the cooperation of Ms Lee, as well as the writer’s family and friends.

The reclusive author rarely speaks to the media, and reportedly has said that she never wrote a follow-up to To Kill A Mockingbird because she feared she could never equal the success that she had with that 1960 classic about racism in the pre-Civil Rights era South.

Ms Mills’s biography is to be published by Penguin Press, which announced earlier this week that it had acquired the work.