A professor is suing James Joyce's estate for refusing to give her permission to use copyrighted material about the Ulyssesauthor and his daughter on her scholarly website.
In the lawsuit filed in San Francisco's federal court, Carol Shloss, an acting English professor and Joycean scholar at Stanford University, challenged the estate's assertion that she would be infringing on its ownership of Joyce's image by quoting his published works, manuscripts and private letters on her site.
Instead, Prof Shloss accused Joyce's grandson, Stephen James Joyce, and estate trustee, Sean Sweeney, of destroying papers, improperly withholding access to copyrighted materials and actively intimidating academics to protect the Joyce family name.
Stephen James Joyce is not named as a defendant in the suit, filed yesterday, but as an agent of his father's estate.
"On multiple occasions defendants have denied permission to quote from James Joyce's writings, or stated that they intended to deny such permission, in retaliation for or as punishment for matters unrelated to protection of copyright in James Joyce's writings," Prof Shloss said in the suit.
Prof Shloss is travelling and unavailable for comment, according to her lawyer David Olson. Mr Olson said copies of the suit would be sent to Sean Sweeney's address in New York and to the estate's law firm in Ireland.
The dispute centres on Prof Shloss's research for Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake, her 2003 book that suggested that Joyce's mentally ill daughter was the muse behind Finnegan's Wake.
Prof Shloss, who said she spent 15 years working on the book, relied on Lucia Joyce's medical records, European archives that contained records on her life and Joyce's papers in university collections to support her theory, the lawsuit states.
Before the book was published, publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux cut several supporting citations from Prof Shloss's tome to avoid sparking a lawsuit, according to Mr Olson.
Prof Shloss wants to post that information as an electronic appendix to answer several critics who charged that To Dance in the Wakewas interesting, but thin on documentary evidence, Mr Olson said.