Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

Patrick Chura (University of Akron)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication Jul 2015

Places

United States (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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 Watchman quickly 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, …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2961 words

Citation: Chura, Patrick. "Go Set a Watchman". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 October 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35664, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Save this article