[Mrs. Don-o]

They're doing this with Willa Cather (d. 1943) now. Her private corresponance and journals have been released by her literary executors for publication, against Cather's vehement demand for privacy. She had explicitly forbidden the publication of, or even direct quotation from, her correspondance.

There is no evidence she was a lesbian, but now all the university literati (with the morals of papparazzi) are combing through her papers trying to find out if she got down with her life-long female friends.

It is truly disgusting, especially since Cather was intensely private by nature, and a classicist by training and temperament. There is nothing she would like less than ginned-up gossip that she had passionate affairs with women --- for which there is (still) no evidence, but the Queer Theorists keep on dredging along.

It's like trying to make a Sapphist out of Emily Dickenson.

[Tax-chick]

She had explicitly forbidden the publication of, or even direct quotation from, her correspondence.

Should have destroyed her correspondence instead of leaving it for posterity.

I've read most of Willa Cather's novels, after refusing to read "My Antonia" in high school. Good stuff.

[ReformationFan]

You mean Miss Cather thought her private life was her own business and no one else’s? What an out-of-step thought in our present day narcissic culture.