Truman Capote's early novel, Summer Crossing, will be published for the first time next month after the handwritten manuscript was found in a box of his papers.
Capote claimed that he had destroyed the manuscript, writing in 1953 that he "tore it up long ago - anyway it was never finished", but a complete first draft was found among photographs and other writings at the bottom of a box he had left on the pavement when he moved out of a Brooklyn apartment in 1966.
The novel, which Capote began in 1943, is the story of a young socialite called Grady McNeil, and her adventures in New York while her parents are away on a summer holiday.
The publishers, Random House, claim that the "dashing, defiant and irrepressibly carefree" heroine "will remind readers of one of Truman Capote's most lasting creations, Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's", who was played by Audrey Hepburn in the film adaptation.
But when the manuscript was first discovered Capote's biographer, Gerald Clarke, questioned its worth, saying that the wishes of the author, who died in 1984 should be observed. "This may not be something that should be published," he said, "because Truman himself did not feel it was worth publishing."
