How many novels did Harper Lee publish?

Harper Lee published two novels: To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman. To Kill a Mockingbird appeared in 1960 and became a Pulitzer Prize-winning classic centered on Scout Finch, her father Atticus, and a racially charged trial in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb.

For decades, it was widely described as Lee’s only novel. That changed in 2015, when Go Set a Watchman was published. The later book was written before To Kill a Mockingbird and contains an earlier version of Scout and other characters, making its publication history more complicated than a conventional sequel.

The two-book answer remains correct when the question asks how many novels Lee published. A common mix-up is saying she published only one, which was true before 2015. Another is treating Go Set a Watchman simply as a standard sequel; it is better understood as an earlier manuscript substantially related to the development of Mockingbird.