I expanded a bit on a blog post from last year with an essay for the Cumberland Law Review which takes up the tools of art authentication to argue that Go Set a Watchman should not be considered an authentic work by the author, and instead complicates the idea of authorship. Here’s the abstract:
For many lawyers, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird represents an important goal to which law and its practitioners should strive. The novel describes the struggle to achieve justice for a black man in the face of deep-seated institutional racism. It stands as a beloved work of literature, widely read and deeply appreciated. Therefore, any work that Lee would have written after To Kill a Mockingbird would have sparked tremendous interest, given the beloved place her first novel holds. But many other questions have arisen since the release of Go Set a Watchman. This essay aims to address how the authenticity of the novel should be weighed by using the tools of art historians and the art market.
- Derek Fincham, Is Go Set a Watchman Authentic?, 47 Cumberland L. Rev. 101 (2016).
