Despite being dismissed by some critics as little more than a mediocre first draft of
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s
Go Set a Watchmanquickly became the most talked about book of 2015, breaking sales records for its publisher and touching off vigorous debates among teachers, historians, literature scholars and everyday readers.
Go Set a Watchman was Lee’s first attempt at fiction, sold in manuscript form to Lippincott publishers in 1957. Tay Hohoff, Lee’s editor at Lippincott, asked the author to move the novel’s setting from the late 1950s to the 1930s and to tell the story from a child’s perspective. The case history suggests this was because Ms. Hohoff viewed the novel as too volatile, telling unpalatable truths about race in the 1950s. The product of Hohoff’s
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Citation: Chura, Patrick. "Go Set a Watchman". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 October 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35664, accessed 23 November 2024.]
