With estate's last executor now deceased, Willa Cather's final wishes -- no film adaptations of her works, respect for her privacy -- die also.

"This month Random House will publish a collection of Willa Cather’s letters, reports the NYT. Cather wished that her novels would be read and interpreted on their merits alone, and to that end, and for the simple sake of privacy, ruthlessly protected her personal material from publication. She fortified her position in her will, banning excerpts and even simple quotations from print. Her biographers have had to make do with paraphrase ever since, until now." -- Matthew Taylor, the American Conservative