Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography, From Shakespeare to Plath.

Boston: Faber and Faber, [1992]. Octavo, black cloth & board (hardcover), gilt letters, viii, 344 pp. Near-Fine, in a Fine (As New) dust jacket. Hamilton presents a probing and far-reaching account of literary estate management and mismanagement through the centuries from Donne and SHakespeare to Plath and Larkin. In a gripping series of case studeis, he recounts the battles between the protective and the crious, between the keepers of the sacred flame and those who might seek to snuff it out. Hamilton offers a violent, lurid and hugely entertaining history of broken promises and mismanaged wills, of reputations whitewashed or maligned, of scholars and crooks, of muddle, trickery, scandal and vendetta. He includes the burning of Byron’s memoir, the dification of Shelley and Henry James’ (Inventory #: 17768scs)