SOURCE: "Provisional Posterities: Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin," in Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography, Hutchinson, 1992, pp. 291-310.

[Hamilton is an English poet, biographer, critic, and editor. His biographies include Robert Lowell: A Biography (1982) and In Search of J. D. Salinger (1988). In the following excerpt, he traces the history of Plath's biographies from her death in 1963 to the present and examines how Hughes's role developed as Plath's reputation grew and changed.]

For literary keepers of the flame, the Copyright Act of 1911 represented a significant upgrading, an access of power. Under the new law, an author's legatee had fifty years' control of published work, together with perpetual ownership of any writings which remained unpublished at the author's death. Keepers could look forward to a lifetime's reign, a lifetime's proceeds. With fifty years in view, their sense of having a double duty—to respect the...