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

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]

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.