- The new book, called Go Set A Watchman, comes out July 14 — three days after To Kill A Mockingbird’s 55th anniversary. Last year, publisher HarperCollins celebrated by releasing the novel as an eBook and digital audiobook after getting Lee’s long-awaited permission.
- Lee is 89 and lives in Monroeville, her Alabama hometown on which Maycomb, her novel’s fictional town, is based. Truman Capote lived in the same town when he was a child and kept a friendship with Lee that lasted until adulthood.
- Lee’s sister, Alice, was a lawyer and kept practicing until she was 100 years old. She died in Monroeville last year at 103 years of age.
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- Lee actually wrote Go Set A Watchman before To Kill A Mockingbird. But her editor at the time was intrigued by the protagonist Scout’s childhood, and suggested Lee write a prequel “from the point of view of the young Scout,” which made her put Go Set A Watchman aside. The result was the now-famous Pulitzer-winning novel.
- The new novel is not Lee’s only lost work. According to her biography by Charles J. Fields, Lee was working on a second novel titled The Long Goodbye shortly after finishing To Kill a Mockingbird, but was discouraged from writing more of it when her publisher started showing interest in her first novel.
- Lee is notoriously reclusive. She stopped giving interviews in 1964 and has made very few public appearances. In 2007 she got a brief glimpse of the spotlight when she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a ceremony at the White House.
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