US playwright Edward Albee, who challenged theatrical convention in masterworks such as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "A Delicate Balance,"has died aged 88, his personal assistant said.

According to the assistant Jackob Holder, he died at his home in Montauk, east of New York. No cause of death was immediately given, although he had suffered from diabetes. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he was arguably America's greatest living playwright after the deaths of Arthur Miller and August Wilson in 2005.

Albee was awarded Pulitzers for A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women.

He described the effect of the play's success in 1996,  "I find Virginia Woolf hung about my neck like a shining medal of some sort really nice but a trifle onerous."

"It's just a quirk of the brain that makes one a playwright," Albee said in 2008. "I have the same experiences that everybody else does, but... I feel the need to translate a lot of what happens to me, a lot of what I think, into a play."

A few years ago, before undergoing major surgery, Albee penned a short statement to be published at the time of his death: "To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love," he wrote.

Praise for the playwright came from far and wide on Twitter after his death. Mia Farrow, who was in a staged reading of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" called Albee "one of the great" playwrights "of our time." Michael McKean wrote: "There was only one Edward Albee. (hash)Irreplaceable." Playwright Lynn Nottage wrote: "I will miss his wit, irreverence & wisdom. He enlivened the theatre landscape."

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