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Roxana Robinson described her second book,a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. “She had justdied; there were three lawsuits going on [battlingover her estate]. Everyone was at each other’sthroats. So I was incredibly careful. I had to typeout every single quote I wanted to use of herletters, and send those to the Georgia O’KeeffeFoundation. One member of the Foundationwas completely opposed to my writing the book,and he would not give me any permissions at allthat he was responsible for.“I was told by my publisher that fair use was15% of whatever the text was. Those numbersare branded in my brain. 15% of the letter,or perhaps 15% in the page of the book I wasquoting from, called Georgia O’Keeffe by GeorgiaO’Keeffe. So I had to go through that book andpractically count the words on every page andallow myself 15% of that. I felt that I was skatingon the edge of this dangerous chasm and if I fell,I could be sued.“At one point, late in the process, I discovereda trove of letters that no one had ever seen,between O’Keeffe and, probably, her firstromantic lead. I wasn’t going to have time toclear them through the O’Keeffe Foundation.But I thought it would be too much for the manwho owned them to suddenly see them spreadout in this biography. So I was very carefulabout those, just because of internal conscience.Which I think now was foolish. I think I shouldhave used them just as much as I wanted to. Butas a biographer, I was very conscious of the otherside. You are using other people’s lives, or otherpeople’s works or thoughts, and so it is a reallydifficult question to balance.”Hazel Rowley described a different experiencewith her Richard Wright biography. “I took animmense risk because Ellen Wright, his widow,had sued a previous biographer, MargaretWalker. I had been warned that Ellen Wrightwas very difficult. I knew I would get nowhereby fronting up to her at the beginning, saying‘Will you sign this form giving me permission toquote from unpublished letters?’ So I wrote thewhole biography, four years of work, taking therisk that she might not give me permission toquote from unpublished material. I spent threemonths in the Beinecke Library at Yale, which hasa massive amount of exciting material. It wouldhave killed the book if she’d refused. If there’sone thing worse than being a white Australianwoman writing about a black American man, itwould have been not to be able to bring his voicein. So the risk I took, when I look back, wasenormous.“Ellen Wright was savage about MargaretWalker, who had quoted letters from Wrightto Walker. Of course, Walker, the recipient ofthe letters, did not own the copyright. So EllenWright sued her, but she lost. 110 I came along afew years later with my biography. I wrote thebook the way I wanted to write it, just as if she’dgiven me permission to quote from unpublishedletters. I sent her some articles I published alongthe way, which she liked. When I’d finished, Iwent to Paris to see Ellen, and had lunch withher. Halfway through the lunch, I casually said Iwould need copyright permission from her. Sheasked whether the publisher would pay for thepermissions. I said, ‘Sadly, not.’ She asked me tosend a word count to Wright’s literary agent. Shesaid she thought I had done a good job, and mybook would revive interest in Wright. She woulddiscuss the price with Wright’s agent, but she’dtry to keep it low. She understood that I didn’thave much money. To my amazement, she neverasked to see the manuscript. I didn’t mention thatsome of the unpublished letters I had managedto find were not among those in the BeineckeLibrary; indeed, they were love letters that EllenWright would find deeply hurtful. Ellen gavepermission, for a very reasonable fee.“I had a fellowship for two months to studyat the Beinecke and took an immense amountof notes. I think American copyright law takesinto account that there is no point in givingscholars access to material if they can’t quoteit even minimally. I boned up on fair use. It iscertainly not 15%, in my understanding. It isfar more minimal than that. The most I allowedmyself from the love letters were eight words aletter, ten words maybe, in a letter of a page ortwo. Publishers never seem to know much aboutit. It’s quite extraordinary. It’s more a matter ofringing around talking to any copyright peoplewho know something. And looking on theInternet. It’s inordinately difficult to find out.”Rowley’s last book was about Sartre andBeauvoir. “Sartre’s published estate is mostly16 Will Fair Use Survive?