[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.”