Harper Lee, famous for having published just one novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is publishing a second one this summer as announced in a press release from HarperCollins today.

Titled Go Set a Watchman (ISBN 978-0062409850, according to Amazon’s listing, but it is not yet showing on wholesaler catalogs; UPDATE, 4:30 p.m.: We were just alerted that it has now listed) it will be published on July 14th, 2015. The book is essentially a sequel, says the publisher, featuring  “many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus. 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.”

In the release, Lee explains that it was essentially her first book,

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. I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn’t realized it had survived, 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.

Many news sources are reporting the story, of course, including the New York Times and People magazine.

To Kill a Mockingbird was originally published in 1960 by J. B. Lippincott & Co., which was acquired in 1978 by Harper & Row, now HarperCollins. The mass market paperback rights were acquired by Little, Brown and are now owned by Hachette/Grand Central. HarperCollins released an eBook edition and a downloadable audio last year, after Lee had held out on making those rights avaialble for several years.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015 at 12:21 pm and is filed under 2015 -- Summer, Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.