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Plathtona 500


This is the 500th post on the Sylvia Plath Info blog. It is hard to believe that:

1) I have this much to say, and
2) so many keep visiting and - as a consequence - encouraging. So thank you! I hope going forward that this blog can continue to present relevant, interesting Plath related content. As always I appreicate those who follow and those who contribute via comments and guest posts.

This blog loves archives. Over the last three plus years I have tried to highlight many institutions which hold Plath archival materials. I find very few things in life so enjoyable as being in an archive. This post will highlight an online archive.

Sotheby's Sold Lot Archive

Sylvia Plath books, and even her personal papers, appear from time to time at Auction. Sotheby's, which has held a number of auctions with Plath materials over the years, has online a sold lot archive, and if you click here, you can see their auctions of Plath items. By clicking on any auction with an image you are able to zoom in to see in pretty good detail the drawing, writing, what have you. Some of the drawings here I think have never been reproduced (either as published by Plath during her lifetime or in a posthumous publication, such as those that accompany the "Biographical Note" by Lois Ames in the American edition of The Bell Jar or those that were reproduced in Plath's Journals, particularly the 2000, unabridged edition). The year 2006 seemed to have been the most active. Wish I knew about it then as some went pretty "cheap".

Bloomsbury, another major auction house, has just one interesting Plath item in their sales archive. It is for "Aunt Rennie and the Elves" which sold in July 2008. The image, as well as the item, is lovely.

To celebrate hitting such a milestone, my next post -barring any huge breaking news or something - will be feature a never-before seen photograph of a Sylvia Plath related place. This is one I have intentionally withheld from my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is. Later on in July or August I'll have another post about another exciting archive.

Also, some company called Kultur is releasing on DVD Owen Sheer's series A Poet's Guide to Britain on 27 July 2010. This means US & Canadian people can see what the British saw in 2009.
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