Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike died Jan 27 after a long suffering from lung cancer. He was 76.

According to a statement released in the afternoon by his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, the writer died Tuesday morning, in a hospice near his home in Beverly Farms in Massachusetts, the state where he lived for more than half a century, prolific in his writing of novels, short stories, essays and criticism.

Updike’s most famous work is his Rabbit series. Both Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest received the Pulitzer Prize. Describing his subject as “the American small town, Protestant middle class,” Updike was widely recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his highly stylistic writing, and his prolific output, having published more than twenty-five novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children’s books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker, starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. His work attracted a significant amount of critical attention and he was considered one of the most prominent contemporary American novelists.

Jonh Updike was born in 1932 and raised in Shillington, Pa., Updike suffered from health ailments such as asthma and psoriasis from childhood.

Updike is survived by his second wife, Martha, four children and grandchildren. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.