Harper Lee, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her only published novel, the beloved To Kill A Mockingbird, will finally be publishing her second novel. The new novel was written in the 1950s, but was only recently rediscovered.
It is titled Go Set a Watchman and runs 304 pages. According to The Associated Press, publisher Harper is anticipating high demand, so the first printing will include 2 million copies. It hits bookstores on July 14.
“In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman,” Lee, 88, said in a statement “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 (what became To Kill a Mockingbird) from the point of view of the young Scout.”
Lee said that she actually didn’t know that the manuscript still existed until her lawyer found it. She shared it with others, who said that it should be published.
While Lee is still best known for To Kill A Mockingbird, she has only been in the news recently due to lawsuits. In 2014, an unauthorized biography titled The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee by Marja Mills was published by Penguin and Lee came out against it, claiming that the stories in it were false.