The invisible hand that nurtured an author and a literary classic

New York

In the spring of 1957, a 31-year-old aspiring novelist named Harper Lee - everyone called her Nelle - delivered the manuscript for Go Set a Watchman to her agent to send out to publishers, including the now-defunct JB Lippincott Co, which eventually bought it.

At Lippincott, the novel fell into the hands of Therese von Hohoff Torrey - known professionally as Tay Hohoff - a small, wiry veteran editor in her late 50s. Ms Hohoff was impressed. "(T)he spark of the true writer flashed in every line," she would later recount in a corporate history of Lippincott.