When Lee was asked in a 2011 interview why she had never published another novel, the writer replied:

“Two reasons: one, I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again.”

For such a perfectionist, the publication of a second novel - which is in fact an early draft of Mockingbird itself - is out of character; it is well known that Lee shelved at least two finished projects because they did not meet the exacting standards set by her first novel. Whatever the motivation or behind-the-scenes events concerning the publication of Watchman, it is clear that even with the existence of an inferior second novel published during her lifetime, Lee will be remembered for one book alone. This is not an unheard of legacy in literature; Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago, Plath’s The Bell Jar, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and Ellison’s Invisible Man were all one-off novels, while Franz Kafka became one of the most influential writers of the century by publishing only a few very short stories, and Marcel Proust spent thirteen years writing his monumental classic In Search of Lost Time, the only novel for which he is widely known.