The Sequel of “To Kill A Mockingbird” 55 Years Later
UPDATE: After decades of refusal to publish anything after “To Kill A Mockingbird,” why would Harper Lee, now 88, finally agree to release “Go Set a Watchman?” This is the latest debate as the State of Alabama is now deep into an investigation into the claims of elderly abuse towards the release of Lee’s long lost manuscript.
It is now being claimed that the script has been in Lee’s safe for years.
Lee’s sister Alice, a lawyer, has tried for years to protect her sister’s rights. Lee has been in an assisted living home since 2007 and cannot see or hear very well and Alice has been quoted as telling a neighbor that Lee cannot remember from one minute to the next who she sees or talks to.
Ironically enough, the news of the release of “Go Set a Watchman” came just months after Alice, age 103, passed away.
It remains unclear what will come out of the investigation and with the scrutiny that Lee’s publisher and lawyer are now facing it’s hard to know what will happen with the most highly anticipated titles in decades.
Fifty-five years after “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Harper Lee,89, is publishing the sequel.
“Go Set a Watchman”, originally written before “Mockingbird” in the mid-1950’s, was presented by Lee to her editor who told her it would be better to write a novel (what became “To Kill a Mockingbird”) from the point of view of the young Scout instead of the older Scout that is now the main character of “Watchman”. Because it was her first time writing a novel, she took the advice of her editor and set the old one aside.
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Lee thought that the original had long been lost when she got a call from a dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter that she had discovered it. After a lot of hesitation, and encouragement by friends and trusted acquaintances, she decided to go ahead and publish it.
According to a press release, “Watchman”, which is also set in the 1950’s, is about Scout (Jean Louise Finch) returning to her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama (a fictional version of Lee’s hometown of Monroeville), to see her father, the upright lawyer Atticus Finch. 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.
After the success of “Mockingbird”, it’s hard for some to imagine that the sequel could even come close. “Mockingbird”, which Lee wrote after she moved to New York, was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize. It was later made into an Oscar winning film in 1962. It has since become a staple on most high schools’ reading lists and has sold more than 30 million copies.
“There is a lot of hype over the new book, and it’s quickly getting a lot of media attention,” said Jennifer Adams of The King’s English bookshop of Salt Lake City. But she admits to being a little apprehensive in getting overly excited. “It’s hard to imagine how this book will not affect how we already feel about ‘Mockingbird’,” she said. She is pretty certain it will still be a success knowing the book’s publisher HarperCollins Publishers, has set a high expectation of sales by printing twp million copies in its first run.
The deal was negotiated by Michael Morrison, President and Publisher of HarperCollins US General Books Group and Canada and is set to publish July 14, 2015. The King’s English will also have the book for sale when the book it becomes available. No need to reserve a copy, two million copies is a pretty good start to making sure everyone who wants a copy can have one.
