To Kill a Mockingbird author to publish a second novel

It has been over 50 years since To Kill a Mockingbird was first published, the one and only novel by author Harper Lee. However, it was announced today that Ms. Lee, now 88, completed another novel in the 1950s. The 304-page book is titled Go Set a Watchman and is a sequel of sorts to her famed To Kill a Mockingbird.  

Go Set a Watchman features an ageing Atticus Finch and his grown daughter, Scout. The story takes place 20 years later in the same fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama and unfolds as Scout, the spirited child heroine of To Kill a Mockingbird, returns to visit her father.

The novel is scheduled to be released this coming July, and although it was written before To Kill a Mockingbird, it is essentially a continuation of the same story, with overlapping themes and characters.

It has been revealed that Ms. Lee was told to abandon the manuscript, after her editor was captivated by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood and wanted her to write a new story from the young heroine’s perspective and to set it during her childhood.  

“I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told,” Ms. Lee said in a statement released by her publisher.

That story soon became To Kill a Mockingbird, a classic that was adapted into a 1962 film and has sold more than 40 million copies around the world since it was first published in 1960. It still continues to sell more than a million copies a year and has been translated into 40 languages.