Rainer Maria Rilke has a good line about fame being the sum of misunderstandings that gather around a name. This wave of books and reconsiderations feels so vital because it chases away so many misconceptions. Take Plath: In the popular imagination, she has long been the victim, the wronged wife, the suicide. But her newly published works, which include her massive collected letters, allow us to see her again, at full sail, her ruthlessness and hunger for experience. She has been unseated as a symbol or cause — and restored to us as a writer.

As a critic, these revivals invariably spark much gratitude, some healthy anxiety (what geniuses am I overlooking?) and a few knotty questions.

It’s tempting, and dangerous, to believe that the cream rises to the top — that great writing will eventually find readers. If anything, these rediscoveries argue the opposite point: Without champions and concerted support, even the most breathtakingly original writer will sail into oblivion, her legacy erased or distorted.

It’s not enough to give thanks that these writers have been restored to us; we need to ask why they vanished in the first place.

The work often contains clues, which is why I’m especially thankful that this era of rediscoveries includes so many journals and letters, from Berlin, Collins, Jackson, Susan Sontag and even Flannery O’Connor, in whose spellbinding “Prayer Journal” we see the 20-year-old writer trying to square her spiritual life with her artistic ambitions. We see their struggles and rivalries, the sexism and racism they face, the child care arrangements that fall through, the jobs that don’t pan out, the husband who goes missing, the alcoholism. But we see their triumphs, too.