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Harper Lee never wanted to publish her “newest” short stories, but maybe she should have.

HarperCollins released “The Land of Sweet Forever,” a collection of eight short stories and eight nonfiction pieces written by the late Harper Lee, for the first time last month. The stories, discovered in her New York City apartment following her death in 2016, were all written prior to the publication of the author’s staple of American literature, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The initial harsh reviews of the collection raise controversy over the ethics of publishing fiction that a dead author never intended the public to read. But for that exact reason, these stories ought to be read without the burden of regarding them as final visions.

According to The New York Times review of the collection, the fictional pieces “are charming … but not especially substantial.”

The Guardian’s review was even more critical.

“If we regard this book as literature, it is an unqualified failure,” Sandra Newman wrote.

But regarding the book as literature without attention to its context is the mistake of an ignorant reader, one which The New Yorker staff writer Casey Cep attempts to cautiously navigate in her introduction of the collection. She details Lee’s creation of all eight short stories in the early stages of her career, and her conclusion reminds readers that these stories were the earliest versions of what would eventually be the chapters of Lee’s masterpiece. She spent “three years,” Cep says, “turning those stories into chapters, and those chapters into novels — first ‘Go Set a Watchman’ and then ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’”

We can appreciate these stories in context as glimpses into Lee’s creative development.

Works should and often do exist in the public domain contrary to their author’s fullest wishes, not only posthumously, but also in the later parts of their living careers. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Aeolian Harp” was a living article that he amended several times, many years after its initial publication. For writers with long and prolific careers, too, such as W. B. Yeats, their earliest volumes may not reflect their later authorial intent.

If we view publication as the final nail in the construction of a creative project, then it makes sense to leave unfinished works alone. But if we surrender this conception of publication as an end-all be-all, then we can read published works with attention to their full continuity without scrutinizing the author’s fullest potential. 

Often, withholding creative works as a result of their creator’s death deprives consumers of the best of that artist. This is the case of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the vast majority of whose poetry was published posthumously by a friend and contemporary poet; so too in the case of Kurt Cobain, whose bestselling and billboard-topping album, “MTV Unplugged in New York,” was released almost seven months after his suicide.

Publishers should approach these cases with caution, as mistakes in contextualization can lead to disappointment. Although “Go Set a Watchman” was released in 2015 and advertised as a supposed sequel to Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” it is really an early draft that was later re-worked into the novel.

But there is no mistaking the place of “The Land of Sweet Forever” in Lee’s writing. Cep advertises and hails the short stories as Lee’s early drafts. They do not demand an altered impression of their author, but instead offer a fuller view into the synthesis of her modern American classic. They foreshadow its creation. They are not the definitive representations of her writing ability, but instead small stepping stones towards what would become the very best of Lee.

Jake Waldvogel is a senior studying English.