Skip to main content

Additional News Articles on Sylvia Plath's First Suicide Attempt

As I do, I recently checked for more articles on Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt in August 1953. The timing was right and there were a few additional articles. To quote Blur, "Woohoo!"

The first is from the Miami Daily News from August 26, 1953. The article title is "Student Missing." It appeared on page one and included Plath's photograph.

The second and third articles appeared in the Meriden Record (Connecticut). On the August 26, 1953 edition, on page 10, readers read about how a "Brilliant College Girl Disappears." Very dramatic.

The following day, the Meriden Record ran "Missing Senior Found Under Porch" on the front page. This article is not yet linked. I'm ahead of Google! However, let this not deter you from finding and reading the article for yourself. If you click "Browse this newspaper," then "View All" under 1953, then scroll to August 27, click it and then mouse down to the bottom right of the first page. You'll have it!

These represent articles 174 and 175 that I have found on Plath's first suicide attempt. What is frustrating is that the bibliography section of my article "'They Had to Call and Call': The Search for Sylvia Plath" is now out of date. I suppose it is a happy frustration because this is the nature of bibliography; and finding new articles only goes to further illustrate the pull of this story. There is nothing new in these articles when compared to the others, however at this point in my research of this topic it is most interesting to see how far the news spread. I will continue to post newly found articles when I find them. If any of your are in towns or cities not covered in the aforementioned bibliography and have some spare time to visit your public or college library to investigate whether it has newspapers on microfilm from August 1953 and want to check August 25-28th for articles please let me/us know if you find something. Please. And please send me photocopies/scans. I'd be most curious about New Orleans, Dallas, St. Louis, Detroit, Denver, Atlanta, San Francisco, Portland (Oregon), Seattle, Cleveland, Raleigh, Juneau, to name a few.

You can see a bibliography of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt, and read PDF's of them, over at A celebration, this is.

Popular posts from this blog

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