Beyond paraphrase …

… Willa Cather: A Hidden Voice by Hermione Lee | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

All of us who have worked and published on Cather, and who have read some of the three thousand or so letters that remain from her life’s correspondence with friends, family, publishers, colleagues, admirers, and fellow writers, had to obey the embargo she left in her will against their publication. As a result, her letters have been paraphrased over and over again by critics and biographers. Her story was told, her secrets were known, but the voice of her letters was not heard.