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In many cases, it seems as if famous authors and others have had their entire "private correspondence" leaked somehow.

You will hear references to "Tolkien letter XYZ", etc., as if this were public information like his books, rather than private replies to individuals.

How did this happen? How did they obtain all those letters (and verify them as authentic)? Did they have no respect whatsoever for the privacy of the person writing it?

Was it actually the author himself who made a copy of each outgoing reply of his just to publish later, having deleted any sensitive information?

I don't get how this all worked.

I'm not talking about e-mails and modern day stuff, because obviously all privacy and respect is completely lost these days.

Jaxxon P
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The letters are part of a writer's Nachlass ("legathy, bequest", from German nach "after" [i.e. after a person's death] and lassen "to leave, to cede"). Either the writers have bequeathed their manuscripts, correspondence and other papers to some institution or their heirs have inherited them, and these then decide to publish all or parts of the Nachlass.

Some people sell or give away their archive while they are still alive. In German this is called a Vorlass (that is, a bequest before a person's death).

Before carbon paper was invented, people often either kept their drafts or a copy of handwritten letters. Later it was common practise to create a carbon copy of typewritten letters.

Sometimes the published correspondence of one person includes letters from several archives: their own and those of their correspondents.

In the case of Tolkien, the editor of his published letters, Humphrey Carpenter, explains:

Some letters are printed from carbon copies kept by Tolkien; he only began to make carbons of his letters towards the end of his life, and this explains why there is no trace of earlier letters unless the originals themselves can be discovered. Other letters in the book are printed from a draft or drafts which differ from the text that he actually sent (if he sent one at all), and in certain instances a continuous text has been assembled from several fragments of drafts ... (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien)

Ben
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