Fifty-five years after the release of her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee is now ready to release another work of fiction. Set in Maycomb, Alabama—the same town as Mockingbird—Go Set a Watchman will effectively act as a sequel to the 1960 book, even following the same cast of characters including Scout and Atticus Finch.
While the 304-page novel takes place in the 1950s (twenty years after her explosive debut work), Lee actually wrote Go Set a Watchman before To Kill a Mockingbird, but altered her text into the celebrated novel that we know today at the suggestion of her editor. Once Mockingbird was published, Watchman was pushed to the wayside and was thought to be lost forever until a friend discovered the completed manuscript last fall. Lee released a statement about her excitement about the impending publication of her second novel:
In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman. 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 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 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 this will now be published after all these years.
Go Set a Watchman will be released on July 14 via a HarperCollins imprint, Harper.
(via The New York Times)
