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Case file s1806 · Literature and art · 1972
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1972
Ezra Pound: Ezra Pound by Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1913, collotype photograph, from the National Portrait Gallery, which explicitly releases this image under the CC0 license. It was p
Ezra Pound. Alvin Langdon Coburn. CC0, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
1 November 1972
Place
Venice, Italy
Field
poet · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
US common law (District of Columbia, guardianship); Italian law · Common law · Civil law
Historical event
Treason charge and insanity finding, 1945 to 1946; release on 7 May 1958
Member of
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Wikidata)
Literature and artSecret children and false heirsBurned papers and destroyed workPostwarEuropeItaly

Ezra Pound spent more than 12 years at St. Elizabeths; his wife held legal control, and after he died the Pound archive was sold to Yale and both claimants were paid

Ezra Pound was arraigned for treason on 27 November 1945 and moved to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington on 21 December. A hearing on 13 February 1946 found him of "unsound mind." In 1946 his wife Dorothy was named his "Committee" in court, in charge of his person and property, and she held legal power over his royalties. He was discharged on 7 May 1958 and returned to Italy. In 1940 he had made a will leaving everything to Mary de Rachewiltz, his daughter with Olga Rudge. It was never registered in Italy, so it was technically invalid, and he could not make a new one while declared incompetent. Dorothy and her son Omar contested it, and the estate was divided. Dorothy died in 1973. In 1986 Rudge, then 91, set up the Ezra Pound Foundation and sold it his archive and the Venice house for about $7,000. Mary tried to dissolve it. Yale University bought the archive from the foundation and paid both claimants; the amounts are confidential and the records were sealed until 2016. Rudge died on 15 March 1996.

What the law took from it

An unregistered will leaves a poet's papers to be settled by lawyers, and a guardian can block a replacement.

Sources
  1. openlettersmonthlyarchive.comGovernment record
  2. archives.yale.eduGovernment record
  3. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Ezra Pound spent more than 12 years at St. Elizabeths; his wife held legal control, and after he died the Pound archive was sold to Yale and both claimants were paid,” story s1806, https://www.celebrity.estate/ezra-pound-1972, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artSecret children and false heirsBurned papers and destroyed workPostwarEuropeCommon lawCivil lawItaly