To Kill a Mockingbird sequel by Harper Lee to be published this summer
Talk about letting the anticipation build! For the first time in more than 50 years, author Harper Lee will release a novel this summer — and it will feature characters familiar to fans of To Kill a Mockingbird.
“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,” Harper Lee said in a press release through her publisher, HarperCollins. “I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told… I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.”
According to HarperCollins, Go Set a Watchman is set some 20 years after the events in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout leaves New York City to visit father Atticus in her hometown. They add, “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.”
Mary Badham, Gregory Peck and Phillip Alford as, respectively, Scout, Atticus and Jem in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.
After initially setting the manuscript aside, Harper Lee believed it was lost until lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it “affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird” in fall 2014. HarperCollins president Michael Morrison said they are thrilled to share the book with the public. He added, “I, along with millions of others around the world, always wished that Harper Lee had written another book. 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.”
A first printing of 2 million copies will be released on July 14, 2015.