Lovers of the 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird have reason to rejoice. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishing, announced Tuesday it would publish a “new” novel by Harper Lee. Go Set a Watchman was in fact finished earlier than To Kill a Mockingbird. Though it was completed in the mid-1950s, the novel was only recently rediscovered by Lee’s lawyer.
The resulting novel, featuring a young Scout Finch and set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, has sold more than 40 million copies and has been read by schoolchildren in classrooms across the country. It received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961, and the 1962 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck earned three Academy Awards.
The book, considered among the great American classics, was banned by some schools for its handling of racial inequality and sexual taboos.
But after To Kill a Mockingbird appeared in 1960, Lee never published a second novel. Lee herself had thought her old manuscript for Go Set a Watchman had been lost, but her lawyer, Tonja Carter, discovered it in 2014 attached to a typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird.
“I hadn't realized it had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it,” Lee says. “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’s book will be hitting shelves just as another “new” novel will be published by another revered literary hero, Ayn Rand. In December, New American Library, a branch of the Penguin Books USA, announced that a novel by the late Rand would be published in July. Rand, best known for her philosophical novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, first wrote Ideal in 1934 but set the novel aside, writing it as a play instead. More than eight decades after she first wrote it, Ideal will be the first Rand novel published in nearly 60 years.
Lee’s Go Set a Watchman will break the reclusive author’s silence when it’s released on July 14, 2015. It tells the story of an adult Jean Louise Finch, nicknamed Scout, returning to her childhood hometown to visit her father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer who in To Kill a Mockingbird defends a black man accused of raping a white woman.
“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,” Michael Morrison, president and publisher of HarperCollins US General Books Group and Canada who negotiated the deal for Lee’s second book, says in the press release.
Soon after the announcement, Twitter was flooded with reactions—and alternate titles—for Lee’s second novel, the To Kill a Mockingbird sequel readers never thought they’d get.
Can we all just take a minute and have a GLOBAL EPIC FREAKOUT over this 2nd Harper Lee novel thing. Ok. Thanks. http://t.co/AcX3h3f7Zh
— Ryan Brown (@ryanlenorabrown) February 3, 2015
As if being a @HarperCollins author couldn't be any cooler--HARPER LEE!!! @ABBalzer, this is epic!
— Marcie Colleen (@MarcieColleen1) February 3, 2015
An actual picture of me in my class today when I found out about the new Harper Lee novel. #SoFreakinExcitedpic.twitter.com/8y05gKagKW
— Hailey Cooper (@HaileyCoopah14) February 3, 2015
Harper Lee’s new book will be titled “How to Kill a Mockingjay.” It’s actually Hunger Games fan fiction.
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) February 3, 2015
The bidding war over the movie rights to "To Kill A Mockingbird 2: Electric Boogaloo" will be legendary.
— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) February 3, 2015
2 Kill 2 Mockingbirds RT @AP: BREAKING: 'To Kill A Mockingbird' author Harper Lee to publish second novel this summer.
— Neetzan Zimmerman (@neetzan) February 3, 2015