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| Harper Lee | |
Harper has acquired North American rights to Go Set a Watchman, a newly discovered novel by To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee. The book will be published July 14 this year.
In a statement, Lee said the novel, which she completed in the mid-1950s, "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."
After To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, Lee set aside Go Set a Watchman and never returned to it. The manuscript was unearthed last fall by Tonja Carter, Lee's lawyer, who found it attached to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird.
"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," Lee said. "I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years."
Go Set a Watchman features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, but is set 20 years later. Scout has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father's attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.
"I, along with millions of others around the world, always wished that Harper Lee had written another book," said Michael Morrison, president and publisher of HarperCollins US General Books group and Canada. "And what a brilliant book this is. I love Go Set a Watchman, and know that this masterpiece will be revered for generations to come."
Calling the discovery "a remarkable literary event," Jonathan Burnham, Harper senior v-p and publisher, added that it is "an extraordinary gift to the many readers and fans of To Kill a Mockingbird. Reading in many ways like a sequel to Harper Lee's classic novel, it is a compelling and ultimately moving narrative about a father and a daughter's relationship, and the life of a small Alabama town living through the racial tensions of the 1950s."
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| Harper Lee in 1962 | |
Early reaction to the news was generally enthusiastic, though doubts were raised as well. Charles J. Shields, who wrote a biography of Lee, told the New York Times: "We're going to see what Harper Lee writes like without a strong editor's hand, when she's, quite honestly, an amateur." The Times also noted that "some critics and observers were skeptical" of Lee's role in approving the deal, since the author suffered a stroke in 2007 and has been living in an assisted living facility. Marja Mills, author of The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee, said, "I have some concerns about statements that have been attributed to her."
But Burnham countered: "We talked to her through her lawyer and friend Tonja Carter," adding he was "completely confident" Lee understood and approved of the deal and that speaking directly with her "wasn't necessary."
In the Guardian, author Jay Parini summed up a common response to the discovery: "One rarely gets a high-voltage shock in the literary world, a bolt from the blue.... It's important to celebrate a fine American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which has introduced half a century of American students to the pleasures of fiction.... It seems unlikely that the publication of another novel by Harper Lee at this stage will make a big difference to anyone, although it will certainly find curious eyes, like my own, eager to read it. And why not?"