Yahoo Lifestyle Harper Lee Is Publishing A Sequel To ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’
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Fans of Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird rejoice: the author will be publishing a sequel this year. The new title, called Go Set A Watchmen, will centre on an adult Scout, who has left small-town Maycomb for New York. When she returns home to visit her father – wise, kind Atticus Finch – she has to come to terms with her views on her town’s past, her family and her father himself.
Lee, 88, revealed in a statement that Go Set A Watchmen was actually written before To Kill A Mockingbird. Her editor at the time loved the flashback sequences to Scout’s childhood in the story so much that he encouraged Lee to flesh out a complete story “from the point of view of the young Scout,” Lee said in a statement. That book, of course, became To Kill A Mockingbird. The original manuscript was shelved and, Lee, believed, lost.
“I hadn’t realised it had survived,” Lee said, “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.”
Lee, a famous recluse who spent most of her life in New York but now lives in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, hasn’t published a book in over 50 years. Her first and only published title – To Kill A Mockingbird – has sold over 30 million copies worldwide and received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Her forthcoming title will be only her second book.
Go Set A Watchmen will be published on July 14 of this year.
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