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Book Reivew: Sylvia Plath, Updated Edition (ed. Harold Bloom)

The eleven essays in Sylvia Plath, Updated Edition (Bloom's Modern Critical Views) are all reprints from monographs or journals. Each is an excellent contribution to Plath scholarship.

Bloom's continued hypocrisy is unforgivable, however. In fact, he re-prints his "Introduction" to his first edition, and in an author's note adds that his revulsion to Plath is ever-growing. I appreciate the fact that Bloom edited the series which featured my book about Plath, but he really should not put his name on a book if he cannot stomach the subject.

The advantage of a book like this is in the wide range of perspective each author gives and, I suppose, in the selection of the pieces by the series editor. Absent are strong essays by Tracy Brain and Lynda K. Bundzten, to name just two of the many Plath scholars I both respect and admire.

Below are the chapters and the work where they previously appeared.

1. "The Bell Jar" by Caroline King Barnard Hall
(Previously published in Hall's Sylvia Plath, revised. NY: Twayne, 1998.)

2. "Sylvia Plath and the Poetry of Confession" by Bruce Bawer
(Previously published in the journal The New Criterion 9, no. 6 (February, 1991): 18-27.)

3. "Daddy" by Jacqueline Rose
(Previously published in Rose's The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1993.)

4. "The Poems of 1957" by Nancy D. Hargrove
(Previously published in Hargrove's excellent The Journey towards Ariel: Sylvia Plath’s Poetry of 1956-1959. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1994.)

5. "A Long Hiss of Distress: Plath's Elegy on the Beach at Berck" by Sandra M. Gilbert(Previously published in the journal Field: Contemporary poetry and poetics, 59, Fall 1998, 30-38.)

6. "Transitional Poetry" by Caroline King Barnard Hall
(Previously published in Hall's Sylvia Plath, revised. NY: Twayne, 1998.)

7. "Gothic Subjectivity" by Christina Britzolakis
(Previously published in Britzolakis' Sylvia Plath and the theatre of mourning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.)

8. "From the Bottom of the Pool: Sylvia Plath's Last Poems" by Tim Kendall
(Previously published in the journal English, vol.49, no.193, Spring 2000, pp23-38.)

9. "Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries" by Susan Gubar
(Previously published in The Yale Journal of Criticism. Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2001, pp. 191-215.)

10. "Plath's Triumphant Women Poems" by Linda Wagner-Martin
(Previously published in Wagner-Martin's Sylvia Plath: A literary life. 2nd ed. New York : Palgrave, 2003.)

11. "Poetry and Survival" by Susan Bassnett
(Previously published in Bassnett's Sylvia Plath: An introduction to the poetry, New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.)
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