Fame Beyond the Grave

The mighty wonderful Telegraph surveys authors whose fame occurred after their passing and those writers whose writings surfaced after they died.

From the story...

At least we know that Dowd intended her two posthumous novels to be published. This is not always the case with writers, ever since Virgil asked for the Aeneid to be incinerated. Franz Kafka told his friend Max Brod that he wanted everything he left behind to be burned unread. Brod claimed that he had already told Kafka that he would not honour that request if he were asked, and argued that the fact that he was chosen as literary executor proved that Kafka did not mean it. Kafka’s reputation was made posthumously, thanks to Brod. (Somewhere out there are 20 notebooks and a stash of letters confiscated from Kafka’s girlfriend Dora Diamant by the Gestapo in 1933. Please check your attic.)


Pictured above: Kafka's grave in Prague.