New Zealand director John Reid's Leave All Fair (1985) is a film that uses letters and journal entries to deliver its messages concerning the ethics of posthumous editing, when letters and journals preserve the legacy of a writer. The writer in question is New Zealander Katherine Mansfield (Jane Birkin), famous for her modernist short stories. Mansfield's husband and editor, John Middleton Murry (John Gielgud), is asked to approve a collected edition of her letters and journals three decades after her death from tuberculosis in Fontainebleau, 1923. This request leads to a flashback narrative that begins with Murry delivering a speech at the launch of the edition. The plot is complicated and thus worth outlining from the start. We see Murry seated at his desk, identifying what the film calls Mansfield's ‘last letter’ – in which she gives Murry contradictory advice about editing her work – with her enduring presence. After an argument between fictitious French editor, André de Sarry (Féodor Atkine), and Mansfield's fictitious feminist double, New Zealander Marie Taylor (also Jane Birkin), we see Murry re-reading the last letter, while being driven to De Sarry's estate. This footage is intercut with flashbacks to Mansfield writing it. Subsequent episodes show Murry meeting De Sarry; watching Taylor's play rehearsal; meeting Taylor in a café, and Taylor arguing with De Sarry about his and Murry's sexist attitudes towards Mansfield. Taylor and Murry discuss Mansfield while visiting an island and De Sarry's family chateau.