[ApK]

Not read it yet, but here's what it's looking like from the comments:

If TKAM was nothing more than a decently successful novel, and some years later, the GSAW manuscript was rediscovered, and the author wanted to publish it, she would probably rely on her clout from the success of her first book to get her publisher to agree, have it edited, make some revisions, and it would be her next book, and that would be that.

But TKAM is a time-honored and respected classic, and its mystique has grown because of her one-great-book-than-decades-of-nothing reclusiveness, so because of its role in TKAM's origin, GSAW is more important for its history than for its story.

Like a "making of" DVD bonus feature, it's probably more interesting to see GSAW as her editor saw it way back when, to see the path her writing took, than to merely edit and craft its story into a decent second novel.

In other words, where AnotherCat said "and if it weren't for historical interest I would probably have given it a miss," I think if it weren't for its historical interest, it would not be published in the state it is. But I think that's a good thing, not a cheap cash grab.

In other other words, it would have been trivially easy to have an editor, or even a ghost, polish the novel, just as TKAM was certainly polished, but they chose to offer it mostly as it was instead, as an artifact of Harper Lee and TKAM.

Neato. It's on my TBR list.