The other was a typescript of a story that, like “Mockingbird,” was set in the fictional town of Maycomb and inhabited by the same people. The “Mockingbird” item turned out to be a publisher’s proof, not a particularly valuable item. Caldwell looked at two documents presented to him in a Lord & Taylor box, according to a person who was briefed on his account. Lee’s writings were kept in a safe-deposit box, along with a typewriter that Ms. Lee’s hometown, at a bank near the town square where some of Ms. Lee would not have sought to publish it earlier.

The discrepancy between the two accounts raises questions about whether the book was lost and accidentally recovered, and about why Ms. Lee’s literary agent, to appraise a “Mockingbird” manuscript for insurance and other purposes. Carter told The New York Times last winter.īut another narrative has emerged that suggests the discovery may have happened years earlier, in October 2011, when Justin Caldwell, a rare books expert from Sotheby’s auction house, flew to Alabama to meet with Ms. Carter set out to review an old typescript of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in August and happened upon an entirely different novel - one with the same characters but set 20 years later - attached to it. On the eve of the most anticipated publishing event in years - the release of Harper Lee’s novel “Go Set a Watchman” - there is yet another strange twist to the tale of how the book made its way to publication, a development that further clouds the story of serendipitous discovery that generated both excitement and skepticism in February.Īs HarperCollins, the publisher, and Ms.

Go tell a watchman