In The Independent Gordon Bowker celebrates the release of James Joyce's work into the public domain (again) in Europe -- and thus the: "the dawn of a new age for Joyce scholars, publishers and biographers who are now free to quote or publish him without the permission of the ferociously prohibitive Joyce estate" --, in the fascinating: An end to bad heir days: The posthumous power of the literary estate
Bowker has good fun with the nuttiness of many of these estates -- but he does ignore the other side of the coin: estates which callously disregard authors' wishes and milk the literary properties for all they're worth, often debasing the authors' work and creations beyond recognition.
(I find this an endlessly fascinating subject (see, for example, my discussion of Literary Legacies: Executors, Duty, the Law -- and a Proposal) -- and a book on the subject is one of my (many) projects.)
Bowker has good fun with the nuttiness of many of these estates -- but he does ignore the other side of the coin: estates which callously disregard authors' wishes and milk the literary properties for all they're worth, often debasing the authors' work and creations beyond recognition.
(I find this an endlessly fascinating subject (see, for example, my discussion of Literary Legacies: Executors, Duty, the Law -- and a Proposal) -- and a book on the subject is one of my (many) projects.)