BOOKS: SEQUEL FROM MOCKINGBIRD AUTHOR
To Kill a Mockingbird is author’s only published book
NEW YORK — To Kill a Mockingbird will not be Harper Lee’s only published book after all.
Publisher HarperCollins announced Tuesday that Go Set a Watchman, a novel the Pulitzer Prize-winning author completed in the 1950s and put aside, will be released July 14. Rediscovered last fall, Go Set a Watchman is essentially a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, although it was finished earlier. The 304-page book will be Lee’s second, and the first new work in more than 50 years.
The publisher plans a first printing of two million copies.
“In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman,” the 88-yearold Lee said. “It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became To Kill a Mockingbird) from the point of view of the young Scout.
“I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn’t realized it (the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that
I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years. HARPER LEE AUTHOR
this will now be published after all these years.”
Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal was negotiated between Carter and HarperCollins head, Michael Morrison. Watchman will be published in the United Kingdom by William Heinemann, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
The U.S. publisher said Carter came upon the manuscript at a “secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird.” The new book is set in Lee’s famed Maycomb, Ala., during the mid-1950s, 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird and roughly contemporaneous with the time that Lee was writing the story. The civil rights movement was taking hold in her home state. The Supreme Court had ruled unanimously in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 led to the year-long Montgomery bus boycott.
To Kill a Mockingbird is among the most beloved novels in history, with worldwide sales topping 40 million copies. It was released on July 11, 1960, won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a 1962 movie of the same name, starring Gregory Peck in an Oscar-winning performance as the courageous lawyer Atticus Finch.