Sylvia Plath at the Morgan Library

On Monday, 21 September, I was able to spend a couple of hours at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

Of the vast holdings at the Morgan is a smallish collection of Sylvia Plath books and a rare manuscripts. The books form part of the Carter Burden Collection of American Literature. The manuscripts, on which I have posted a couple of times on this blog (here and here), are of 40 or so "juvenile" poems, written between 1937 and the mid-1940s. Previously, I have seen only a black and white photocopy, from microfilm, but on this research visit I was given permission to see the original. Plath illustrated her early journals, which are housed at the Lilly Library (more on Plath and the Lilly later this week!) at Indiana University, but I don't recall seeing many illustrated poems. What a treat this turned out to be.

The books I looked at were:

The 1972 proof of Winter Trees published by Harper & Row; the 1976 proof of The Bed Book published by Faber & Faber; the long galley proof of Crossing the Water published by Harper & Row; and the British magazine Nova, which published Plath's "Heavy Woman" and "Mirror" on page 37 of the May 1970 issue. Inserted between pages 48 and 49 Nova was an article by Amanda Craig entitled "Children of the Lesser Gods." The subtitle is "Crow Baby? Amanda Craig meets the Laureate's Daughter." It is an article removed from Tatler magazine, I believe, page 172. The date wasn't discernable. In all, there are 55 Sylvia Plath items to look at at the Morgan.

I selected these to look at as, in my travels to different libraries and to book stores and book fairs, I had not seen these. But the real star was those manuscripts. If you are ever in the New York City area, or planning to visit, you should try to see these. One must plan in advance though as the Reading Room is small and tends to fill up. Information on applying is available through the Morgan's website, see link above.

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'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...

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...

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