BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee railed against her Alabama hometown for trying to exploit her success in a letter that helps explain later legal battles involving commercialization of her novel.

The writer's bitter assessment of Monroeville comes in a three-page letter that's being sold with other items by Bonhams auctions.

Lee used Monroeville as the model for fictional Maycomb, Alabama, in her landmark book about racial injustice in the Jim Crow South.

But in a letter she wrote to a friend in 1993, Lee complained that leaders were trying to turn her into a tourist attraction like Elvis Presley and Graceland.

Lee spent the final years of her life in disputes over the use of her book to promote Monroeville. She died in 2016.