Novel Update

In November 2010 I visited for a day the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland, College Park, to work with the Frances McCullough papers. Recently browsing through the notes made there, I was reminded about a "Did you know..." post that I wanted to write. So it only took me 12 years...The UK edition of Plath's Winter Trees was published on 27 September 1971. The American edition was

One way to add context to Sylvia Plath's letters and journals---that is, to her autobiographical life---during her years at Smith College is to read what was written about her by her classmates and/or other peers in the Smith College Associated News (SCAN) or The Sophian. Plath mentioned SCAN in a letter from her first days at Smith (26 September 1950). But even though mentions in her own

Sylvia Plath meticulously kept track of her publication endeavors. She made submissions lists from around the time she a junior in High School (1948-1949) to within days of her death in February 1963. She was assuredly the consummate professional. If a work was published she usually kept a copy of its appearance for herself, though there are some instances were poems or works in prose were not

Normally this kind of update appears in August, but for various reasons it is appearing today. Since I wrote last year, a number of new articles on Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt have been digitized. Each was transcribed and was added to the full bibliography of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt on my website, A celebration, this is.The ten new articles appear below."Missing Student

On 5 July 1943, Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother from Camp Weetamoe in New Hampshire that she consumed "5 Tollhouse cookies" (Letters Vol I, 10). From Smith College seven years later, Plath casually mentioned that if her mother wanted to send her something that "Toll house cookies will be most welcome. I’m too hungry to share many, so will eat them with my before-bed glass of milk" (202). By

A friend recently let me know about a typescript page of some unidentified, untitled prose of Plath's wondered if I had seen it before. The answer was no, not really. However, after reading said typescript and Googling a random phrase, I learned that it was in fact published in the 1982 abridged edition of The Journals of Sylvia Plath (published in the US only). Said text was printed in the

In early 1998, for those of us who were alive, the poetry world was abuzz with Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and, sad to say, Jewel. The first two because of Birthday Letters. The third name, because...well, it was a dark time...In March 1998, Robert Haas was recently replaced as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress by Robert Pinksy, but he was a the author of a weekly "

Because I had a rare moment of prescience in 2017, I saved all the web material related to Ken Lopez's failed attempt to sell Harriet Rosenstein's archive. Having access to the shoddy inventory proved useful. In fact, it was a source of hours of conversation and speculation with David Trinidad between 2017 and the archives opening at Emory in January 2020.In particular, the folder of Elizabeth

On Thursday morning, 20 February 1958, in Northampton, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath wrote the following in her journals: "let the people: Jane Baltzell (whom I have just written to, come & take my place) and Barry Fudger & Chris Levenson & Ildiko Hayes & Judy Linton & Dan Massey & Ben Nash - let all their names - Gary Haupt - Mallory Wober - John Lythgoe - Keith Middlemass

Azalea Path is one of the more famous "addresses" in the life and oeuvre of Sylvia Plath and it does not house a house at all. Rather, it is the cemetery avenue in which her father, Otto Emil Plath, was laid to rest. Otto Plath immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1900 at the age of 15 years old. He settled eventually in Massachusetts, marrying his wife Aurelia Schober Plath, in

Recovering from an appendectomy in London, on 6 March 1961, Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother: "& I must say I have secretly enjoyed having meals in bed, backrubs & nothing to do but read (I’ve discovered Agatha Christie – just the thing for hospital reading – I am a whodunit fan now)..." (Letters of Sylvia Plath, Vol. II 584). However, as Plath was attuned to popular culture, she had

The archival finding aid is many things. It is a textual map.  It serves as a basic outline of a collection. It is also a key. It provides information, sometimes minute (item level) and sometimes very broad and general. The Plath mss II finding aid is a wonderful document which was created by the Lilly Library in 1977, the year of the collection's acquisition from Aurelia Schober Plath.

On Thursday, six Sylvia Plath limited edition books are offered for sale through Forum Auctions in England. Lot 179 is a collectors dream, assembling the following books: Lyonnesse, number 120 of 300 copies, original morocco-backed boards, , t.e.g., others uncut, slip-case, Rainbow Press, 1971; Three Women, number 168 of 180 copies, printed in red and black, illustrations by Stanislaus Gliwa