James Joyce's grandson destroyed his aunt Lucia's letters and threatened scholars until the copyrights ran out in 2012

Stephen James Joyce, born in Paris in 1932, was James Joyce's grandson and his only living descendant. He and Seán Sweeney were the trustees of the Joyce estate. Joyce's daughter Lucia spent decades in psychiatric care and died in 1982^†. Stephen received her letters. In 1988 he had them all destroyed. In a 1989 letter to The New York Times he said they were personal. He also said postcards and a telegram from Samuel Beckett were destroyed at Beckett's written request. He threatened the Irish government with legal action when the 2004 Bloomsday festival planned public readings from Ulysses. The scholar Carol Loeb Shloss sued him and Sweeney with Stanford's Fair Use Project, accusing them of destroying papers and intimidating academics. In March 2007 they settled: Shloss could publish the material online and in a new edition, and the estate agreed not to sue her over US publication. On 1 January 2012 Joyce's works entered the public domain in the EU. In 2013 Stephen called Ireland's commemorative Joyce coin "one of the greatest insults" to the family. He died in 2020.