Willa Cather's letters to be published next month

[astrangerhere]

O Revelations! Letters, Once Banned, Flesh Out Willa Cather

Though Willa Cather expressly stated in her will that she did not wish her letters to ever be published, Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout are doing just that now that the last executor of Cather's estate has died.

The editors admit that it is "that publication of the letters “flagrantly” violates Cather’s wishes, expressed in a will that partially expired in 2011 with the death of her nephew and second executor, Charles Cather. But publication, they argue, advances the deeper purpose of Cather’s restrictions: cementing her status as a major literary artist."

I love Cather, but part of me (probably the attorney part) finds this really distasteful. Either way, no stopping it now.

[Xanthe]

Ms. Stout and Mr. Jewell, sensing a possible change in the legal climate, began drawing up a book proposal about five years ago. After Charles Cather’s death in 2011, the copyrights passed to the Willa Cather Trust, a partnership of the Cather family, the University of Nebraska Foundation, and the Willa Cather Foundation, an educational organization in her hometown, Red Cloud, Neb.

The ban on quotation and publication of the letters was quickly dropped, along with the ban on film adaptations.

“I think it’s quite elegant,” Guy Reynolds, an English professor at the University of Nebraska and a board member of the Cather Foundation, said of the arrangement. Most royalties will “support public access to Cather’s material.”