Editor’s Note: The publication in 2015 of a second novel by Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), aroused enormous controversy and renewed attention to her work. Go Set a Watchman, the new novel, is set twenty years after the events of Mockingbird, although it was written earlier. The appearance of a revered author’s second book more than fifty years after her first excited readers and critics, but many were shocked by its depiction of Atticus Finch. The wise and patient white lawyer who is a model of heroism and enlightenment in Mockingbird is found espousing segregationist views as he responds to the burgeoning civil rights movement in the South in the mid-fifties.
Because Harper Lee’s first novel has attained canonical status in American education, in middle school, high school, and to some extent in college and
Get access to this article, plus the entire archive, by subscribing.