Did Harper Lee write a To Kill A Mockingbird TRILOGY?

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Tonja Carter is Harper Lee's 'estate trustee, lawyer and friend'
She was the one who found the manuscript of Go Set A Watchman in a safety deposit box this year, starting the process for it to be published
Carter has revealed she also found another 'typed text'
Possibly a third book that bridges Mockingbird and Watchman
Experts will now examine the text to work out what it is
Watchman, set 20 years after Mockingbird, is released Tuesday
Critics divided over Watchman, calling it both ' amateurish ' and 'fascinating'

By Associated Press Reporter and Dailymail.com Reporter

Published: 14:05 EST, 13 July 2015 | Updated: 17:44 EST, 14 July 2015

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The attorney of Harper Lee has revealed she found another lost manuscript that could be a third book that bridges To Kill A Mockingbird with the author's controversial new novel, Go Set A Watchman, which hit shelves tomorrow.

However the possibility of a third book from Lee has been challenged by a leading biographer.

In an op-ed piece posted late Sunday on the Wall Street Journal's website, Lee's lawyer, Tonja Carter, wrote that last summer she was at a gathering of Lee's friends and family members when 'talk turned' to a possible second novel by the author.

According to Carter, it was the first time she had heard of the existence of Go Set A Watchman.

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Mysterious: The attorney for To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee has raised the possibility that the reclusive author may have written a third, as-yet-unpublished novel

Lawyer Tonja Carter (right), who found controversial new novel Go Set A Watchman - released tomorrow - has revealed she also found another 'typed text' that could bridge Watchman and To Kill A Mockingbird

She then searched in a safe deposit box in Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, that contained some of Lee's papers and found 'Watchman' underneath 'a significant number of pages of another typed text'.

'I immediately went to Nelle,' Carter wrote, referring to Lee's first name, which she is often called by.

'I said, ''Nelle, when I was in the safe-deposit box, I found something.'

'She said, 'What?' I said, 'It's a manuscript of a novel called 'Go Set the Watchman.'

'She said, 'It's 'Go Set a Watchman.' '

'I asked, 'Is it finished?'

'Nelle replied, 'I guess it's finished, it's the parent of 'Mockingbird.'

At the end of her op-ed piece, Carter suggested that the 'typed text' in the box of papers could be an early 'Watchman' draft or a third book 'bridging' the stories of 'Mockingbird' and 'Watchman.'

Lee's literary agent, Andrew Nurnberg, has previously said that he has seen old letters between Lee and her then-agent that indicated 'Mockingbird' was part of a planned trilogy.

'In the coming months, experts, at Nelle's direction, will be invited to examine and authenticate all the documents in the safe-deposit box,' Carter wrote.

Late release: Lee, 89, pictured above at a press event for the book last mont, once swore never to publish another book. But she had an apparent change of mind after the Go Set a Watchman manuscript was found

Calling herself Lee's 'estate trustee, lawyer and friend', Carter also disputed recent reports that she had learned of 'Watchman' a few years earlier, during a review of some of Lee's papers that included a Sotheby's appraiser and then-Lee attorney Samuel Pinkus.

Contradicting statements by Pinkus, Carter said she was not in the room at the time 'Watchman' might have been discussed and that no one mentioned the book to her.

Lee sued Pinkus in 2013, alleging that he had 'duped' her into signing over the copyright of 'Mockingbird.'

They settled months later.

Until Sunday, Carter had said little about 'Watchman.'

Set in Lee's fictional Maycomb, Alabama in the 1950s, 'Watchman' was written before 'Mockingbird,' but takes place 20 years later.

Lukewarm reviews and reports of the book's raw account of an elderly, racist Atticus Finch have not prevented 'Watchman' from holding the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com's best-seller list.

Harper Lee's long awaited 'Go Set a Watchman' hits stores

Despair: Many Harper Lee fans were aghast to find out that Atticus Finch, portrayed above by Gregory Peck in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, is a racist

Trailer for the iconic novel turned film 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

ATTICUS SHRUGGED: SHOCKING LINES SPOKEN BY ONCE-REVERED LAWYER IN NEW NOVEL GO SET A WATCHMAN

'Do you want your children going to a school that's been dragged down to accommodate Negro children?'

'The Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.'

'Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?'

Atticus calls pro-segregation councils: 'a sort of warning to the Negroes for them not to be in such a hurry.'

'Now think about this... What would happen if all the Negroes in the South were suddenly given full civil rights? I'll tell you, There'd be another Reconstruction. Would you want your state governments run by people who don't know how to run 'em?... We're outnumbered, you know.'

Et tu, Scout?

Even though Scout, the main character of both Lee novels, is more enlightened than her father, she expresses shocking sentiments towards black people even while speaking in their defense:

'We've agreed that they are backward, that they're illiterate, that they're dirty and comical and shiftless and no good, they're infants and they're stupid, some of them, but we haven't agreed on one thing and we never will. You deny that they're human.'

'Mockingbird,' published in 1960, was No. 2 as of midday Monday.

'Watchman' finds Finch in possession of a racist tract called 'The Black Plague', and sees him scolding his adult daughter Scout for her progressive views on equality, according to New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal reviewers, who received advance copies.

'Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?' Finch asks Scout in 'Watchman', the reviews say.

Carter has been the object of skepticism since February, when HarperCollins revealed the stunning news that a second novel from Lee would be released.

Many wondered whether the 89-year-old Lee, who has poor hearing and eyesight and lives in an assisted facility in her native Monroeville, had approved the publication.

Alabama state officials, responding to at least one complaint, met with her and concluded she was alert and aware of the book's release.

Harper Lee's home town excited for second novel (archive)

Charles J. Shields, author of 'Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee,' said Monday that he had never seen any indication that Lee was working on a trilogy.

'To the contrary, her agent, Annie Laurie Williams, wrote to her a year after the publication of 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' encouraging her to have another novel soon,' Shields wrote in an email.

''Go Set a Watchman' was complete at that time, but unpublished.

'If a trilogy was planned, why didn't Lee, her editor, and her agent turn their attention to that manuscript?'

Shields added: 'A shaggy-dog story seems to be developing about lost manuscripts.'