Literary executor

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Literary executor

A literary executor is a person with decision-making power in respect of a literary estate.

The literary estate of an author

Author

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created....
who has died will often consist mainly of the copyright

Copyright is a form of intellectual property which gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation; after which time the work is said to enter the public domain....
and other intellectual property

Intellectual property

Intellectual property are law property over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries and inventions; and words, phra...
rights of published works, including for example film

Film rights

Film rights are the rights under copyright law to make a derivative work -- in this case, a film -- derived from an item of intellectual property....
and translation

Translation

Translation is the hermeneutics of the Meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an Dynamic and formal equivalence text, likewise called a "translation," that communicates the same message in another language....
rights. It may also include original manuscripts of published work, which potentially have a market value; unpublished work in a finished state or partially completed; and papers of intrinsic literary interest such as correspondence or personal diaries and records.

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Encyclopedia

A literary executor is a person with decision-making power in respect of a literary estate.

The literary estate of an author

Author

Intellectual property

Film rights

Film rights are the rights under copyright law to make a derivative work -- in this case, a film -- derived from an item of intellectual property....
and translation

Translation

Academia

Academia, Academe, or the Academy are collective terms for the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research....
, the German

German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
term Nachlass for the legacy of papers is often used.

Since the literary estate is a legacy to the author's heirs, the management of it in financial terms is a responsibility of trust. The position of literary executor

Executor

An executor, in the broadest sense, is one who carries something out .Executor is also a legal term referring to a person named by a maker of a will , or nominated by the testator, to carry out the directions of the will....
has more to it than the simple monetary aspect, though. Appointment to such a position, perhaps informally, is often a matter of the author's choice during his or her lifetime. If a sympathetic and understanding friend is in the position of literary executor, there can be obvious tensions: what is to be managed is not just a portfolio of intellectual property, but a posthumous reputation. Wishes of the deceased author may have been clearly expressed, but are not always respected. Family members often express strong feelings about privacy of the dead. For example, biographical writing is likely to be of a quite different authority if it is carried out with access to private papers. The literary executor then becomes a gatekeeper.

Examples of literary executors include Max Brod

Max Brod

Max Brod was an Austria-Hungary-Jewish author, composer, and journalist, known for his close friendship with Franz Kafka....
for Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German language-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austria-Hungary, presently the Czech Republic....
, Sir Edward Marsh

Edward Marsh

Sir Edward Howard Marsh , born to Professor Howard Marsh of Downing College, Cambridge, was a United Kingdom polymath, translator, arts patron and civil servant....
for Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke

Rupert Chawner Brooke was an England poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the World War I ; however, he never experienced combat at first hand....
, Robert Baldwin Ross

Robert Baldwin Ross

Robert Baldwin "Robbie" Ross was a Canadian journalist and art critic. He is best known, however, as the executor of the estate of Oscar Wilde, with whom he had been lifelong friends....
for Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish people playwright, Irish poetry and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest Celebrity of his day....
, Robert Hayward Barlow for H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an United States author of horror fiction, fantasy fiction, and science fiction, known then simply as weird fiction....
and Otto Nathan

Otto Nathan

Otto Nathan was an economist who taught at Princeton University , New York University , Vassar College , and Howard University .Dr. Nathan was a close friend of Albert Einstein for many years and was designated by Einstein as co-trustee of his Literary executor with Helen Dukas....
for Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a Germany-born theoretical physics. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass?energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2....
. If Brod had followed Kafka's expressed wishes on the destruction of his papers, Kafka's current reputation would be almost nonexistent.. A particularly notorious example is Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Therese Elisabeth Alexandra F?rster-Nietzsche , who went by her second name, was the sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the creator of the Nietzsche Archive in 1894....
for Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th century philosophy Germans philosophy and classical philology. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive German language style and displaying a fondness for metaphor and aphorism....
, as she even resorted to fraud to make her brother's Nachlass more compatible with Nazi ideology. An exceptionally productive example is that of Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner was an Austrians philosopher, literary scholar, educator, architect, playwright, social thinker, and Esotericism. After gaining initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher, at the beginning of the twentieth century he founded a new spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing...
. Although he did not originally intend that the stenographs of his thousands of lectures be published, he relented and named his second wife, Marie Steiner-von Sivers

Marie Steiner-von Sivers

Marie Steiner-von Sivers was the second wife of Rudolf Steiner and one of his closest colleagues. She made a great contribution to the development of anthroposophy, particularly in her work on the renewal of the performing arts , and the editing and publishing of Rudolf Steiner's literary estate....
, to direct his Nachlass, which has produced more than three hundred volumes since his death in 1925. The older examples of such appointments, such as Kenelm Digby

Kenelm Digby

This article is about Kenelm Digby, the seventeenth century English courtier, diplomat and natural philospher. For other people with the same name, see Kenelm Digby ...
for Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an England English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satire plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist , and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his Lyric poetry poems....
, are essentially editorial rather than legal. A contemporary case is Christopher Tolkien

Christopher Tolkien

Christopher Reuel Tolkien is the youngest son of the author J. R. R. Tolkien , and is best known as the editing of much of his father's Posthumous work published work....
's work on J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Order of the British Empire was an English people English literature, poetry, Philology, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion....
's papers.