Here's The New York Times' original 1960 review of To Kill a Mockingbird

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Fifty-five years after the release of her classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, it was announced today that Harper Lee will share another work with the world. Go Set a Watchman, which is essentially a sequel to Lee's much-loved first offering, will be released on July 14.

But before it won a Pulitzer Prize and staked a claim on middle school reading lists everywhere, To Kill a Mockingbird was just another book being reviewed by The New York Times. In the July 13, 1960 paper, reviewer Herbert Mitgang dubs Mockingbird "a winning first novel by a fresh writer with something significant to say."

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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.