Lee, who is 89, wrote “Go Set A Watchman” in the 1950s but set it aside when her editor suggested she write a novel from young Scout’s point-of-view.
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A previously unknown manuscript found in a cardboard box could be “an earlier draft of Watchman or of Mockingbird or even, as early correspondence indicates it might me, a third book bridging the two”, Carter said. On Tuesday (July 14), HarperCollins is releasing “Go Set a Watchman“, a title that comes from Isaiah 21:6: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth”. Experts, under direction from Lee, will be asked in the coming months to authenticate the pages, she said. A major character Atticus Finch, who started out as a small town Alabama lawyer in the first book, has a different persona in the second. It finds Atticus hostile to the growing civil rights movement.
The portrait of Atticus, a supposed liberal revealing crude prejudices, will likely re-energize an old debate about “Mockingbird“, which has always been admired more by whites than by blacks. Frey-Gardner reports that one customer who signed up will be reading from his own Braille copy.
If Lee had published her story in its original form without the courtroom drama at its heart, the 1962 film that won Gregory Peck his only Oscar would most likely never have been made.
In the 55 years since its publication, Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” has become not only a classic, but also a literary treasure that readers have taken to their hearts. “Go Set a Watchman” was actually written years before “To Kill a Mockingbird“.
The new book will focus on the later lives of characters Atticus and Jean Louise “Scout” Finch from Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It was Carter, Lee’s lawyer, who stumbled upon the manuscript in August.
In a history of Lippincott, Hohoff gave a tantalising insight into her working relationship with Lee: “When she disagreed with a suggestion, we talked it out, sometimes for hours”. The book will be released on July 14.
“Go Set a Watchman” is a publishing phenomenon – yet nearly no one has seen it. The frenzied anticipation is fueled largely by the unique place “Mockingbird” holds in American culture: It’s beloved by millions, critically acclaimed and still relevant.
While there are no midnight-release parties, as there were for some of the keenly-anticipated Harry Potter books, there’s enormous interest in the closely-guarded “Watchman”. According to Carter, it was the first time she had heard of the book’s existence. Second, Lee’s declining health was cited in her 2013 lawsuit against ex- agent Samuel Pinkus. The Alabama Securities Commission investigated allegations of elder abuse but found no reason to intervene.
The literary world is on fire!
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Mary McDonagh Murphy, director of the PBS TV documentary “Harper Lee: American Masters”, said it was wrong to call the writer a recluse.
