Sylvia Plath Collections: T. Thomas papers, mss

The good people at the Lilly Library quietly acquired some of Trevor Thomas' papers earlier this year. The T. Thomas mss, ca. 1976-1990, "consist of the correspondence, writings, legal depositions, poetry, typescript of his autobiography, and poetry of Trevor Thomas, b. South Wales, 1907. Appointed Keeper of the Department of Ethnology in the City of Liverpool Free Public museum, Thomas became a nationally known specialist in primitive art and for his innovative exhibition displays at the museum. Thomas was living in the apartment below Sylvia Path at the time of her death by suicide.

"The collection includes correspondence between Thomas and Aurelia Plath following her daughter’s suicide; correspondence with Linda Wagner–Martin, a biographer of Plath, including a typescript copy of parts of her book and an inscribed hard copy of the published text, Sylvia Plath: A Biography. It also includes legal documents, news clippings and testimony regarding Ted Hughes suit against Mr. Thomas for aggravated libel for comments made by Thomas in his self-published memoire, Sylvia Plath: Last Encounters."

In all the collection is about 200 items. An interesting association collection. To see the finding aid and to access other holdings at the Lilly, click here. This looks like the papers that bookseller Richard Ford was selling, which I posted on 25 April 2009. (It appears his copy of Last Encounters is still for sale.)

Thanks to Sophie Eleanor Turner for leading me to learn about this acquisition.

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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