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To Kill a Mockingbird will not be Harper Lee's only published book after all.

Publisher Harper announced Tuesday that Go Set a Watchman, a novel the Pulitzer Prize-winning author completed in the 1950s and put aside, will be released July 14. Rediscovered last fall, Go Set a Watchman is essentially a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, although it was finished earlier. The 304-page book will be Lee's second, and the first new work in more than 50 years.

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The publisher plans a first printing of 2 million copies.

"In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman," the 88-year-old Lee said in a statement issued by Harper. "It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout's childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became To Kill a Mockingbird) from the point of view of the young Scout."

The existence of Go Set a Watchman was unknown until recently, and its discovery is an extraordinary gift to the many readers and fans of To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham on Lee's new book
"I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized it (the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years."

Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal was negotiated between Carter and the head of Harper's parent company, Michael Morrison of HarperCollins Publishers. Watchman will be published in the United Kingdom by William Heinemann, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Watchman set in 1950s

According to publisher Harper, Carter came upon the manuscript at a "secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird." The new book is set in Lee's famed Maycomb, Alabama, during the mid-1950s, 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird and roughly contemporaneous with the time that Lee was writing the story. The civil rights movement was taking hold by the time she was working on Watchman. The Supreme Court had ruled unanimously in 1953 that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 led to the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott.

"Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus," the publisher's announcement reads. "She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father's attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood."

Published with no revisions

Harper Lee
Harper Lee, seen here in 1963, wrote Go Set a Watchman in the mid-1950s. Harpers plans to publish the book in July with no revisions. (File/AP Photo)

Lee herself is a Monroeville, Alabama native who lived in New York in the 1950s. She now lives in her hometown. According to the publisher, the book will be released as she first wrote it, with no revisions.

To Kill a Mockingbird is among the most beloved novels in history, with worldwide sales topping 40 million copies. It was released on July 11, 1960, won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a 1962 movie of the same name, starring Gregory Peck in an Oscar-winning performance as the courageous attorney Atticus Finch. Although occasionally banned over the years because of its language and racial themes, the novel has become a standard for reading clubs and middle schools and high schools. The absence of a second book from Lee only seemed to enhance the appeal of Mockingbird.

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Lee's publisher said the author is unlikely to do any publicity for the book. She has rarely spoken to the media since the 1960s, when she told one reporter that she wanted to "to leave some record of small-town, middle-class Southern life." Until now, To Kill a Mockingbird had been the sole fulfillment of that goal.

Book's existence 'unknown'

"This is a remarkable literary event," Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham said in a statement. "The existence of Go Set a Watchman was unknown until recently, and its discovery is an extraordinary gift to the many readers and fans of To Kill a Mockingbird. Reading in many ways like a sequel to Harper Lee's classic novel, it is a compelling and ultimately moving narrative about a father and a daughter's relationship, and the life of a small Alabama town living through the racial tensions of the 1950s."

To Kill a Mockingbird to be released as e-book
The new book also will be available in an electronic edition. Lee has openly started her preference for paper, but surprised fans last year by agreeing to allow Mockingbird to be released as an e-book.

Two and a half months after the death of Harper Lee's sister (and lawyer) and 55 years since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, HarperCollins has announced the summer release of Go Set a Watchman, the elusive author's second novel.

According to the New York Times, Go Set a Watchman "takes place 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird:

Though it's effectively a sequel, Ms. Lee actually wrote " Go Set a Watchman" first. The 304-page novel takes place in the same fictional town, Maycomb, Ala., and unfolds as Scout Finch, the feisty child heroine of "To Kill a Mockingbird," returns to visit her father, Atticus.

Sadly, this news is not without controversy or complications. Harper Lee's sister Alice Lee, who ferociously protected Harper Lee's estate (and person) from unwanted outside attention as a lawyer and advocate for decades, passed away late last year, leaving the intensely private author (who herself is reportedly in ill health) vulnerable to people who may not have her best interests at heart.

Tonja Carter, Harper Lee's attorney since Alice Lee retired at the age of 100, acknowledges that the author—who was left forgetful and nearly blind and deaf after a stroke in 2007—often doesn't understand the contracts that she signs. "Lee has a history of signing whatever's put in front of her, apparently sometimes with Carter's advice," Gawker's Michelle Dean reported last July.

"The existence of 'Go Set a Watchman' was unknown until recently, and its discovery is an extraordinary gift," said HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham in a statement.

But was the gift willingly given?

"After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication," Lee said in a statement of her own. "I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years."

That might seem like confirmation of Lee's willing involvement in Go Set a Watchman's publication, except for the fact that we know about Lee's messy relationship with her attorney (who, again, often gets her to sign things that she doesn't understand) and Lee's own publicity-shy character.

Lee once told Oprah over (a non-televised) lunch that she hated being compared to To Kill a Mockingbird's spunky protagonist Scout Finch. "I'm really Boo," she said, referring to the reclusive hero whose actions—by the grace of Atticus Finch (and the benevolent Heck Tate)—were allowed to go unpublicized.

In the past, Lee affectionately referred to her sister Alice as "Atticus in a skirt." Not just because she was an amazing lawyer, but because she was the protector who shielded Harper Lee from the publishing world and press attention that she was so adamantly repelled by. But now Alice—her Atticus—is gone and an unhealthy and unstable Lee must alone face the publishers, interviewers and literary agents that she's spent her entire life avoiding.

Our Boo Radley is being dragged into the light.