Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes house for sale

This story ran in the Cambridge Evening News, 23 June, 2007

Love nest of poets Ted and Sylvia up for sale
Cameron Ramos

A HOUSE once lived in by poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has gone up for sale for more than half a million pounds.

The couple began probably the best period of their stormy six-year marriage at 55 Eltisley Avenue in Cambridge, living there from October 1956 to May 1957.

Selling agents Pocock and Shaw describe the house in the Newnham area of the city as a spacious four-bedroom family home in a much sought-after residential location.

The famous couple were a little less prosaic. In her letters, Plath talked about the Edwardian grate and the apple tree in the garden, and Ted Hughes, who in 1984 was to become Poet Laureate, wrote a poem called 55 Eltisley Avenue.

Dr Terry Llewellyn, a retired director of German Studies at Christ's College, Cambridge, is selling the house.

He said: "This house was converted into two flats back then. It had a typical English kitchen and Sylvia Plath, being American, was used to the latest technology but she coped and cooked for Ted Hughes and his friends.

"In her letters she talks about the Edwardian grate and the apple tree in the garden, which are still there now.

"We've had quite a lot of people coming here, mostly American women who make a pilgrimage to the city. I show them what there is to see."

Sylvia Plath, author of The Bell Jar, came to Cambridge on a Fulbright Scholarship, and embarked on a two-year course at the university.

She was affiliated to Newnham College and lived at Whitstead, a college building in Barton Road.
Jean Gooder, who is a retired director of studies in English at Newnham, remembers both Plath and Hughes from those days.

She said: "I was a contemporary of Sylvia Plath and did not know her well because she was a year behind me as she came over to do the two-year course and one didn't see much of the other years.

"I remember she was quite a blonde bombshell and very ambitious and clearly heading straight for the elite literary heights of Cambridge and of course she met Ted.

"I met him and he was quite a formidable, dark and fascinating figure; very powerful and influential. He moved with a small group and they clearly were, in literary terms, the most creative. They were not following any conventional tracks at all but neither was she."
The estate agents said they were close to selling the property, which is on the market at £550,000.

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last

Search This Blog