It’s tempting to think that the reclusive writer has spent that time working on the follow-up to her book that sold 40 million copies and was made into a film starring Gregory Peck in an Oscar-winning role, but that’s not the case.
The book, called Go Set a Watchman, was actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee took it to a publisher who told her that the book, which sees a grown-up Scout visit her lawyer father Atticus in her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama during the civil rights era, who told her to write it from the point of view of Scout as a child.
Lee said in a statement:
“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 (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.”
Lee, now 88 and living in New York City, who once said in a press conferernce that she was “scared” of writing a second book, is excited about the book’s publication.
“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 said.
The book, thought to be missing, was found by Lee’s lawyer attached to an old To Kill a Mockingbird manuscript. The 304-page book will be published by HarperCollins in July.
To Kill a Mockingbird was set during the Great Depression in America and tells the story of young girl, Scout, whose lawyer father – the great Atticus Finch – defends a black man who has been charged with the rape of a white woman.
A mainstay on the school curriculum, the book still sells more than one million copies each year and has been translated more than 40 languages.
