It is a slightly uncomfortable truth that once any author who has been successful during their lifetime has died, any scraps of writing they leave behind will usually, at some point, be published – whether that work was intended to be made public or not.
Some writers try to take control while they are still alive. For example, the Italian author Andrea Camilleri completed the final novel in his beloved Inspector Montalbano mystery series years before his death, and left it in a locked safe at his publishing house with instructions that it was to be published posthumously. Sometimes family or friends destroy the works to protect them from being published: Cassandra Austen famously burned almost all of her sister Jane’s letters, and Philip Larkin’s secretary Betty Mackereth burned the poet’s diaries after he died, on his instructions.
“I was perfectly happy to destroy his diaries by first shredding them and then burning the remains because that is what he wanted,” Mackereth told the Daily Mail in 2010, explaining that she “didn’t consider any onlookers’ point of view.”
“I have no idea what the diaries held because I didn’t look at them,” she added. Which seems very honourable – but also displays the kind of self-restraint that most of us wouldn’t have.
“I don’t think it’s just exploitative publishers or greedy relatives who encourage the publication of works authors have left behind - readers are interested too,” says author and Guardian critic Blake Morrison. “If you love an author, you want more of them.”
Fans might feel uneasy about reading Lee’s stories or another major forthcoming posthumous publication – Joan Didion’s journal addressed to her husband, recording her sessions with a psychiatrist. Because both works were completed well before their authors died, there was plenty of time for them to have been published during the authors’ lifetimes, should they have wanted. Those moral and strong-willed enough probably think that means they shouldn’t be published now, and will avoid reading them. Yet ultimately, I suspect intrigue will win out for many readers, who won’t be able to resist another opportunity to read the work of an author they love.
“If you’re sensible you’ll make allowances if the books aren’t the author on top form,” Morrison says, but notes that if the texts “complement or shed light on an author’s more accomplished work, or indeed on their life, then of course people are curious to read them.”
What about when an author has specifically stipulated that a work isn’t for publication? This is “more of a problem,” Morrison admits, but notes that Kafka made remarks of that kind to his friend Max Brod.
“Brod ignored them because he wasn’t convinced Kafka really meant them,” Morrison says. “And we’re grateful to Brod. Should we be equally grateful that Larkin’s diaries were destroyed at his request? Or that friends burned Byron’s memoirs? I’m afraid not - I’d have loved to read them.”
Morrison also wants to read Didion’s journal, though says he’ll “feel guilty and furtive for doing so.”
“The same if I read Harper Lee’s stories - I’ll wonder why she didn’t publish them in her lifetime and whether their publication now is a betrayal of trust,” he says. “Then again, neither Didion nor Lee destroyed the work themselves. And if you’re a famous author and you leave something behind without instructions that it be burned, perhaps that’s a form of consent.”
Whether or not such works should be published in the first place, when they are, should they be seen as canonical?
“Maybe not,” says Morrison, “since the authors weren’t around to oversee and authorise their publication. But they’ll be fascinating addenda - footnotes to the major work.”
Joan Didion. Photograph: Liz O Baylen/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
