Skip to main content

More Sylvia Plath College Articles Found

This is a third blog post on articles authored by (or possibly/probably authored by) Sylvia Plath. The first blog post was posted on 20 May 2014. The second was posted on 8 June 2014. This post discusses articles published or referenced to in letters from events Plath covered for Press Board in March, April, and May 1952.

In her sophomore year, Plath was active on the Smith College Press Board. Her letters home refer repeatedly to events she was covering. This presents us with tantalizing possibilities to either uncover original Press Board typescripts in the Smith College Archives, or anonymous articles as they appeared in newspapers in Northampton and Springfield, Massachusetts. In addition to her letters, Plath's calendars at the Lilly Library are perhaps the richest sources for biographical information of her college years. The calendars record particularly her activities with regard to campus events, classes, dates for tests and papers, dates with boys, social engagements, and meals, among other data. Her calendars featured the words "Press Board" or "cover" on so many occasions one could go blind and/or crazy trying to find articles she possibly authored.

In the absence of original, attributed typescripts, we are therefore relegated to searching for only those events Plath covered that she wrote about in letters or detailed in her calendars. In conjunction with the letters and calendars, there is further need for cross-referencing to gain information on her activities and to narrow down the events Plath attended by looking through copies of the Smith College newspapers, the Smith College Associated News and The Sophian, as well as the Smith College Weekly Bulletin. Massive thanks are due to Nanci Young, the College Archivist at Smith, and Diane Wieland, the College Archives Intern for their help to my remote queries.

On Thursday 6 March, Plath wrote to her mother that she the M.I.T. professor/communist Struik (Dirk Jan Struik) speak on 3 March (a Monday) and that she found him to be a compelling Marxist; and that the Press Board accepted her review nearly word for word. The letter was published, heavily edited and with these details cut out, under the wrong date --the postmark date-- in Letters Home. An article was published anonymously in the Springfield Union on Tuesday 4 March 1952, page 2, under the title "'Heresy Hunts' Menace Liberty: Struik Claims". Based on Plath's letter to her mother and the tone of the article I do believe this was the piece Plath authored.

On Wednesday 30 April, Plath wrote to her mother that she was covering five lectures in four days. Like the above, the letter was included in Letters Home and heavily edited, though was published under the correct day. The lectures Plath covered were Ogden Nash that night, 3 European student conference lectures on 1 & 2 May; and a "Friends" (probably Friends of the Library) meeting on Saturday 3 May 1952, which involved Smith alumnae who have great book collections.

Of all these events covered over those four days, there was only one article I found in searching the three newspapers for whom Plath regularly wrote while on Press Board (Springfield Daily News, Springfield Union, and the Daily Hampshire Gazette). There was an anonymous article reviewing the Ogden Nash reading printed on 1 May 1952 in the Springfield Union, page 30, with the title "Ogden Nash's Rhyming Knack Makes Up for His Talent Lack".


All links accessed on 30 May 2014 and 14 June 2014.

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