Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman might not have been as lost as we thought

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published 2 July 2015

The prequel to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is set to be released on July 14. But controversy about its history — and if Lee, 88, really wants it published at all — has grown thicker already. While the official story holds that Tonja B. Carter, Lee's lawyer, was reviewing an old typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird and happened upon the manuscript for its prequel, Go Set a Watchman, The New York Times has dug up a second, conflicting narrative.

According to the new story, Carter might actually have found the book in 2011, when viewing the contents of Lee's safe-deposit box during a Sotheby's auction house rare books appraisal. In the box, Carter — along with Justin Caldwell, a rare books expert, and Alice Lee, Harper's sister — are said to have discovered a typescript story that looked suspiciously like To Kill a Mockingbird, but clearly wasn't the same.

The other was a typescript of a story that, like Mockingbird, was set in the fictional town of Maycomb and inhabited by the same people. But Mr. Caldwell noticed that the characters were older, and the action set many years later, the person said. After reading about 20 pages and comparing passages to a published copy of Mockingbird for nearly an hour, Mr. Caldwell is said to have realized the differences and told the others in the room that it seemed to be an early version of the novel. [The New York Times]

However, Carter said she had to leave the room and denied she had ever heard of a different manuscript being found that day.

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The implications of the second narrative could be hefty, though. While Go Set a Watchman has already rocketed to being the bestselling preorder in the publisher's history, some think that Harper Lee, despite assurances otherwise, might not actually want Mockingbird's prequel published. Adding to the suspicion is the fact that Alice Lee might not have approved of Carter or anyone else publishing the novel. The release of Go Set a Watchman was announced three months after Alice's death.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.