Editing Book burning (section)

== Posthumous destruction of works ==

When [[Virgil]] died, he left instructions that [[Aeneid#Virgil's death, and editing|his manuscript of the ''Aeneid'' was to be burnt]], as it was a draft version with uncorrected faults and not a final version for release. However, this instruction was ignored. It is mainly to the ''Aeneid'', published in this "imperfect" form, that Virgil owes his lasting fame – and it is considered one of the great masterpieces of classical literature as a whole.<ref name="destroyed" /><ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/is-the-aeneid-a-celebration-of-empire-or-a-critique |title=Is The Aeneid a Celebration of Empire - or a Critique? |last=Mendelsohn |first=Daniel |date=October 8, 2018 |magazine=The New Yorker |access-date=October 16, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181008122550/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/is-the-aeneid-a-celebration-of-empire-or-a-critique |archive-date=October 8, 2018}}</ref>

Before his death, [[Franz Kafka]] wrote to his friend and [[literary executor]] [[Max Brod]]: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread."{{sfn|Ovenden|2020|pp=101–103}}<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26kafka-t.html |title=Kafka's Last Trial |last=Batuman |first=Elif |date=September 22, 2010 |website=The New York Times |access-date=October 16, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118161517/https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26kafka-t.html |archive-date=January 18, 2022}}</ref> Brod overrode Kafka's wishes, believing that Kafka had given these directions to him, specifically, because Kafka knew he would not honour them – Brod had told him as much. Had Brod carried out Kafka's instructions, virtually the whole of Kafka's work – except for a few short stories published in his lifetime – would have been lost forever. Most critics, at the time and up to the present, justify Brod's decision.<ref name="destroyed">{{cite web |url=https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/kafka-wanted-all-his-work-destroyed-after-his-death-or-did-he-20180906-h14zsd#:~:text=Before%20he%20died%2C%20Kafka%20had,including%20his%20letters%20and%20diaries. |title=Kafka wanted all his work destroyed after his death. Or did he? |last=Kirsch |first=Adam |date=September 6, 2018 |website=Financial Review |access-date=October 16, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211022091129/https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/kafka-wanted-all-his-work-destroyed-after-his-death-or-did-he-20180906-h14zsd |archive-date=October 22, 2021}}</ref> In his foreword to Kafka's ''The Castle'' Brod noted that when entering Kafka's apartment after his death, he found several big empty folders and traces of burnt paper - the manuscripts which were in these folders having evidently been destroyed by Kafka himself before his death. Brod expressed pain at the irreversible loss of this material and happiness at having saved so much of Kafka's work from its creator's ruthlessness.

A similar case concerns the noted American poet [[Emily Dickinson]], who died in 1886 and left to her sister Lavinia the instruction of burning all her papers. Lavinia Dickinson did burn almost all of her sister's correspondences, but interpreted the will as not including the forty notebooks and loose sheets, all filled with almost 1800 poems; these Lavinia saved and began to publish the poems that year. Had Lavinia Dickinson been more strict in carrying out her sister's will, all but a small handful of Emily Dickinson's poetic work would have been lost.<ref>{{cite book|last=Habegger|first=Alfred|title=My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson|url=https://archive.org/details/mywarsarelaidawa00habe|url-access=registration|year=2001|page=[https://archive.org/details/mywarsarelaidawa00habe/page/n651 604]|publisher=Random House |isbn=9780679449867}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Farr|editor-first=Judith|title=Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays|year=1996|publisher=Prentice Hall International Paperback Editions|isbn=978-0-13-033524-1|page=3}}</ref>

In early 1964, several months after the death of [[C.S. Lewis]], Lewis' literary executor [[Walter Hooper]], rescued a 64-page manuscript from a bonfire of the author's writings – the burning carried out according to Lewis' will.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/rescued-from-the-bonfire-the-lost-work-of-c-s-lewis-2231809.html |title=Rescued from the bonfire, the lost work of C S Lewis |last=sharp |first=Rob |date=March 4, 2011 |website=Independent |access-date=October 16, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110305170411/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/rescued-from-the-bonfire-the-lost-work-of-c-s-lewis-2231809.html |archive-date=March 5, 2011}}</ref> In 1977, Hooper published it under the name ''[[The Dark Tower (Lewis novel)|The Dark Tower]]''. It was apparently intended as part of Lewis' ''[[Space Trilogy]]''. Though incomplete and evidently an early draft which Lewis abandoned, its publication aroused great interest and a continued discussion among Lewis fans and scholars researching his work.