News

Andrew Nurnberg Associates is delighted to announce a new collection from Harper Lee, The Land of Sweet Forever.

Containing several unseen short stories from the early creative years of the legendary author of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, this landmark collection will be published on 21^st October 2025. The Land of Sweet Forever will be published in the US by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins; in the UK by Cornerstone, a division of Penguin Random House; in Denmark by Lindhardt og Ringhof; in Germany by Penguin Verlag, an imprint of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe; in Italy by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore; and in many further territories to be confirmed in the coming weeks.

The Land of Sweet Forever contains eight short stories written before Harper Lee began work in earnest on the novel that would become To Kill a Mockingbird, during a period when Lee was submitting her short fiction to journals and periodicals. The typescripts of these stories were among the papers Lee left in her New York City apartment upon her death in 2016. In 2024, the Estate made the decision to publish the stories alongside eight nonfiction pieces by Lee, which appeared in a range of publications between 1961 and 2006, collected together for the first time and now brought back into the public eye.

The resulting collection offers a fascinating new perspective on an iconic and unique literary mind, one of America’s most beloved authors. From the Alabama schoolyards of Lee’s youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of midcentury Manhattan, from Lee’s reflections on the responsible teaching of children to a delightful account of Gregory Peck and the To Kill A Mockingbird film set, The Land of Sweet Forever broadens our understanding of Lee’s remarkable talent. The collection will prove an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Lee’s development as a writer as her craft defines itself across years and outlets before and after Go Set A Watchman and To Kill A Mockingbird – as well as a touchstone in still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life.

Dr. Edwin Conner, Lee’s nephew, reflects: “As a member of Harper Lee’s surviving family, I know I speak for all of us in saying that we’re delighted that these essays, and especially the short stories, which we knew existed but were only recently discovered, have been found and are being published. She was not just our beloved aunt, but a great American writer, and we can never know too much about how she came to that pinnacle.”

Michael Dean, the representative of the Lee Estate at Andrew Nurnberg Associates, writes: “The stories and essays collected in The Land of Sweet Forever ring with Harper Lee’s inimitable voice, and bring us closer than ever before to the life and work of one of the twentieth century’s greatest authors.”