Obituary: Alwyn Ruddock
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/feb/17/obituaries.mainsection
Thursday 16 February 2006
[snip] She eventually finished a draft of her book on Cabot, but destroyed it because it did not meet her exacting standards. She began work on the book again, but her progress was slowed by failing eyesight and declining health. This second version was not completed, and she left strict orders that all research papers were to be destroyed at her death. [/snip]
Hunter states that she prepared a third volume on the Southampton port records, but it was somehow "stopped" and she accused Quinn of stopping it, which he denied. (WTF???)
She wrote a draft on English merchant activity in the Mediterranean in the first half of the sixteenth century, but for some reason the Hakluyt Society declined to bring it out. She then tried to publish this draft through Athlone (University of London publishing house), but no go.
She decided to give up on the academic presses, and publish a popular work through an agent. No go. Then she tried the University of Toronto Press in 1989, again no go.
Hunter: "It’s difficult not to empathize somewhat with Ruddock, whose publishing failures should not be written off simply as the result of irascible eccentricity or hyper-perfectionism. She was clearly hurt by colleagues. Hostile committees or individuals at academic presses apparently repeatedly thwarted her publishing plans. Oxford University Press, the Hakluyt Society, and Harvester Press all turned down her projects."
Another Ruddock obituary says that she was "burned early in her career by another academic who used her unpublished research without attribution."
The last ditch was University of Exeter Press in late 1992, for a book to be produced before 1997. They didn't get a draft (in 5 years!!!). (aside - if it was that important in MY field, I would have had people wooing her for a draft.)
My take is that somebody(s) had it in for her for whatever reason, and they thought they'd be clever and hide behind the scenes. Well, they apparently succeeded TOO well, in my view.
Taken in whole, I incline to believe they deserve what she did. It's a shame, but it shows once again that the Academy has strayed far from its roots, like in the Global WarmScamming skullduggery.