Sylvia Plath: Film Buff

One cannot read and work with Sylvia Plath's letters, diaries, scrapbooks, or pocket calendars without noticing a trend. She loved movies, plays, and late in her life, the opera. She took in a film whenever and wherever she could in Wellesley, Boston, the Cape, Northampton, Cambridge (US and UK), London, and New York, to name several cities she cultivated in her quest for culture.

When I was working on the Letters of Sylvia Plath, I included the cinema or theater name for the films, plays, etc. that she attended. I did this for a couple of reasons, one of which was this kind of information interested me and so I felt compelled to record it in case there are other like minded Plath readers out there. I wrote a little about this recently on Gail Crowther's website in a piece called "The Archival Stretch".

After a while of repeatedly seeing reference to these events, I decided to compile a list of all the films, plays, and what not that Plath took in using all the resources that I had available to me. I kept a list of them (and other noteworthy notes) on a folder and the worked on transcribing that into a Word document.

This is not a fully comprehensive list because, for example, there are no pocket (or personal) calendars for 1957-1961 that we know of. Plath did see a film with Susan O'Neill-Roe and her then boyfriend, Corin Stanton-Hughes in January 1963. She wrote on 16 January 1963, "Sue & her sweet boyfriend Corin took me out to a movie the other night" (Letters Vol 2, 958). However, the film is not named. One can see what films were on at the time but one can at the moment only guess which it was.

After this long pre-amble, this blog post is to simply announce that the bibliography of films, plays, etc. that Plath saw is now available as a PDF on A celebration, this is, my website for Sylvia Plath. I had to wait to post this until both volumes of Plath's letters were published as the information in them was under strict embargo by the publisher.

Here are some of the listings for events Plath took in: Janie Gets Married; a concert on the Esplanade in Boston; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari; Galileo; and Through a Glass Darkly!

If I ever learn of new things to add I will do so; and of course if you spot any errors please do let me know.

All links accessed: 27 August 2018.

Sylvia Plath Collections: Treasures at the Pierpont Morgan Library

October is American Archives Month in the US, so let us look at the first of a few Sylvia Plath Collections I have been sitting on for years!

As with much else at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, their Sylvia Plath holdings are remarkable. As of 14 March 2017, the catalog returns more than 100 records when searching all collections. Certain collections are not applicable, such as Medieval Images Only and Music Manuscripts and Books. But, of those  records there are treasures lurking any reasonable way you sort it.

The items discussed in this post were worked with one day in January 2017 and the excessive delay in posting about it was due to the embargo on anything to the with Plath's letters. My reason for the trip was to work with the letters from Plath to the Merwins and to William and Edith Hughes.

If you want limited editions and rare books, the Morgan Library has something for you to look at. They have several copies of the rare printing of A Winter Ship, including some proofs, an original letter from Ted Hughes to the Tragara Press owner Alan Anderson which includes a typescript copy of "A Winter Ship", and two original letters by Sylvia Plath to Anderson. It was good to find these as Smith College has photocopies but lacked the envelope on which Plath added a postscript. The postscript is fascinating as it was intended for Plath's mother and concerned her childhood friend Betsy Powley Wallingford. Plath sent a letter the same day to her mother and simply wrote the PS on the wrong envelope...  Other limited editions include Above the Oxbow, Fiesta Melons, and The Surgeon at 2 a.m. & other poems to list just a few.

The Morgan also has numerous publications in which Plath's works first appeared including several of The Phillipian from the mid-1940s. Additionally some late publications like London Magazine and The New Statesman, and much, much, more, of course.

Some of these holdings are in the general special collections and were purchased through normal collecting and via auction. This blog has featured a couple of their early poetry manuscripts (4 July 2007, 17 August 2007, and 23 September 2009) that were purchased in the 1982 Sotheby's auction (Lot 96). A great many form part of the Carter Burden Collection of American Literature.

Additionally, I worked with several of the holdings in the Burden Collection and thought it would be good to finally blog about them, to bring them into greater awareness, perhaps?

 

The first item is a first edition of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962), signed and inscribed by Lessing to Plath and Ted Hughes. Lessing's inscription reads simply,

To Ted and Sylvia

with love from

Doris (Lessing)

14th June 1962

This was a Thursday. Plath's mother was due to arrive for a visit the following week. There is no indication in Plath's 1962 Royal Letts Diary Tablet to indicate if Lessing visited them that day, which according to Plath's notes was a very busy day for errands and things. So it is a mystery to me… I can only think that Lessing posted it, she visited them, or someone brought it to them. Lessing was friendly with the Macedo's and knew Assia Wevill, so perhaps introductions were made through those contacts? The book shows evidence of being read and is mostly free of any reader marginalia. There are faint pencil marking on pages 20, 44, and 46.

While that is undeniably awesome. The main reason for my visit were the Plath items concerning Dido and W. S. Merwin which include five letters from Plath to the Merwins (one also contributed to by Ted Hughes), what I believe is a letter fragment from Ted Hughes, and Merwin's copy of Plath's The Colossus. 

First up, the book. I've worked with several other copies of The Colossus that Plath signed and inscribed to people such as Marcia Brown, so learning of a new copy and working with it was quite special. Plath signed and inscribed her copy of her first book to the Merwin's as follows:

For Dido and Bill
with love—
from Sylvia
October 27, 1960

The image here is not Merwin's copy.

Merwin signed his last name beneath Plath's inscription on the front free endpaper and made pencil markings on poems/pages:

"Departure" p. 19
"The Colossus" p. 20
"Lorelei" p. 22
"Black Rook in Rainy Weather" p. 42
"The Disquieting Muses" p. 58
"Moonrise" p. 66
"Frog Autumn" p. 70
"The Beekeeper's Daughter" p. 75
"The Burnt-out Spa" p. 78
"Who" p. 81
"Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond" p. 84-85
"The Stones" p. 86

The letters to the Merwins were ones I had been looking for for some time; and according to the catalog record the Morgan received them from Burden's heirs in 2013. I am unsure if that means they were visible in the catalog at that time but I guess what matters is that they were found. Each letter below has a link to the catalog record which provides some summary information.

The first letter they have is misdated and at the time of writing my long email with evidence of the correct date has not yet encouraged them to revise the catalog record. They have it dated 28 February 1960. However, since there is a mention of a sleeping Frieda, that is an impossibility! The letter was actually written on 24 June 1960.

The second letter, 7 March 1961, is toward the end of Plath's hospitalization for her appendicitis.

The third letter, circa 30 July 1961, is after their visit to France and Yorkshire.

The fourth letter, 8 November 1962, discusses the breakdown of their friendship after the breakdown of Plath's marriage, among other topics.

There are two other letters. The first is a partial letter from Hughes to Merwin that they have as being part of the circa 30 July 1961 letter mentioned above. There are clearly two different letters. The earlier one is from just after their return to London after visiting Yorkshire with Plath and Plath's mother and is before they agreed to buy Court Green. The second letter is from after their move to Court Green as it mentions sub-letting their flat to the Wevill's and some other business such as Plath's editing of American Poetry Now. As with the first, misdated letter mentioned above, my recommendations to modified the catalog record have not seen any action yet.

The other letter is a carbon of a letter from Merwin to Plath dated 5 November 1962.It was to this letter that Plath responded in her 8 November letter mentioned above.

There is also a stray letter from Plath to her in-laws William and Edith Hughes dated 9 October 1961, a month or so after her move to Court Green.

So a wealth of Plath related archival materials in the form of poems, manuscripts, typescripts, books, periodicals, and more. It was brilliant to get to work with these papers, to visit the reading room again, and spend a day in New York City. If you are ever in or near New York City, please do drop by the Morgan: but write well in advance, admission to the reading room is by appointment/approval only.

All links accessed 14 March 2017

Triple-Threat Woman: The Letters of Sylvia Plath

The British Library will host an event on 23 October 2018 entitled "Triple-Threat Woman: The Letters of Sylvia Plath". Tickets went on sale on 10 September and it has been exciting to see and hear of people making bookings. This blog post is simply to reiterate the information on the British Library events page.

Insights into the life and work of a great writer

Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath was a great letter writer, and a newly published collection (The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume II: 1956–1963, Faber and Faber) gathers letters from the period when she wrote her best-known works Ariel and The Bell Jar. Join the editors Peter K Steinberg and Karen V Kukil, and leading Plath scholars Heather Clark and Mark Ford, to explore the insights that they provide into her life and work.

Alternating reflections on literature with quotidian episodes, the letters offer insights about her life as an American woman in England in the late 1950s and 60s, and her experience with writing, her marriage to Ted Hughes and motherhood.

'If I want to keep on being a triple-threat woman: writer, wife and teacher…I can't be a drudge'. From a letter to Marcia B Stern, 9 April 1957

Heather Clark is the author of two award-winning books on 20th-century poetry: The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972 and The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (2011) both published by Oxford University Press. Her biography of Sylvia Plath will be published by in 2019.

Mark Ford is a poet, critic and Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London. He has written four collections of poetry: Landlocked (1992), Soft Sift (2001), Six Children (2011), and Enter, Fleeing (2018).

Karen V Kukil curates literary manuscripts at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, including the papers of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. She is the editor of the Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000) and Woolf in the Real World: Selected Papers from the Thirteenth International Conference on Virginia Woolf (2005) and co-editor of the Letters of Sylvia Plath (2 vols. 2017-2018). Kukil's exhibitions include 'No Other Appetite': Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Blood Jet of Poetry (Grolier Club, 2005) and One Life: Sylvia Plath (National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C, 2018).

Archivist Peter K Steinberg is co-editor the Letters of Sylvia Plath (Faber) and co-author of These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath (2017). He authored the biography Sylvia Plath (2004), the introductions to The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath (2010) and Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year's Turning by Elizabeth Sigmund and Gail Crowther (2015), and articles on Plath have appeared in Fine Books & Collections, Notes & Queries, and Plath Profiles.

In association with Faber and Faber and supported by the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library

Details
Name: Triple-Threat Woman: The Letters of Sylvia Plath
Where: Knowledge Centre
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London
NW1 2DB

When: Tue 23 Oct 2018, 19:00 - 20:30
Price: Full Price: £12.00
Member: £12.00
Senior 60+: £10.00
Student: £8.00
Registered Unemployed: £8.00
Under 18: £8.00
Enquiries: +44 (0)1937 546546
boxoffice@bl.uk

All links accessed 12 September 2018.

Happy Anniversary: The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I

Just a brief blog post today to say Happy One Year Anniversary to the Faber edition of The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956, published one year ago today.

All links accessed: 26 September 2018.

Sylvia Plath and the Hurricane of 1938

One of the most indelible memories of Sylvia Plath's 30 years was the famous and fierce hurricane of 1938 which affected Winthrop, Massachusetts on the evening of Wednesday, 21 September 1938, eighty years ago today, when Plath was nearly six years old.

Plath wrote about the hurricane in a some of her works  but this post looks at just two. The first is her poem "The Disquieting Muses":

Typescript of Sylvia Plath's "The Disquieting Muses"

In this photo, showing the back of the 92 Johnson Avenue house in Winthrop, you can see the "study windows" Plath references in the poem. Facing the water are six, and on either side are three additional windows each. The math works out here: "twelve / Study windows..."

And another appearance of the hurricane was in her last prose piece, "Landscape of Childhood" (published as "Ocean 1212-W").

The title of Plath's prose piece comes from her grandparents phone number. Her grandparents house was 892 Shirley Street, on a thin strip of land between the Atlantic Ocean and Winthrop Bay.

892 Shirley Street, Winthrop.
Photograph ©Gail Crowther

In "Ocean 1212-W", Plath recalls:

Clips of the text from The Listener, 29 August 1963

In the above snippets, you can see Plath gets the year wrong by writing 1939; there were no hurricanes to affect Massachusetts that year. It should have been, of course, 1938.

 Below is the front page of the Boston Globe for 22 September 1938.

Winthrop was mentioned a couple of times, too.

Sylvia Plath, her brother Warren, and their friends David Freeman and Ruth (Freeman) Geissler were photographed in their neighborhood in the aftermath of the storm. These photos are supplied by Ruth and used with her kind permission.

The first one here I believe shows a felled tree across Somerset Avenue pretty near the intersection with Somerset Terrance where David and Ruth lived. I base this on the house in the background and compared to a current Google Street View image.

The second image features a dog! It has been harder to try to trace where this is from but you can clearly see a huge bit of earth behind Plath's right shoulder and it appears they are in someone's front or back yard.

All links accessed: 8 September 2018.

Sylvia Plath Finding Aid at Smith College

Smith College has recently published online finding aids to two collections.

Sylvia Plath collection, ca.approximately 1930-1998
Collection number: MRBC.MS.00045

Abstract: The Sylvia Plath collection contains writings by and about the American poet, novelist, and Smith College graduate, including poems, journals, articles, and correspondence to and from Plath. The bulk of the collection is manuscript, printed, or published materials but also includes realia, and audio/visual materials.

The collection is held by the Mortimer Rare Collection in the Neilson Library. Currently the library is under construction so the collection is accessible in the Young Library, 4 Tyler Drive.

The second collection is the papers of Plath's psychiatrist, Ruth Barnhouse (a.k.a. Ruth Beuscher).

Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse papers, 1915-1999, 2008
Collection number: SSC.MS.00202

Abstract: Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse was a psychiatrist, theologian, and ordained Episcopal priest known for being poet Sylvia Plath's psychiatrist, and for her theological publications related to homosexuality, sex, and women in the Christian church. This collection contains materials reflecting both her personal and professional lives, most of it from about 1970 and later. The collection contains a small amount of materials related to Sylvia Plath, which have been put in separate series for ease of access and reference.

The Barnhouse papers are held by the Sophia Smith Collection which is also temporary located in the Tyler Library.

It's simply fantastic that this resource is now available online.

The Special Collections website should have all the information you need if planning to visit. These finding aids are now listed on the Archival Materials page of A celebration, this is.

All links accessed 12 September 2018.

Sylvia Plath Collections: Letters to Ruth Beuscher

The court case Smith College brought against Harriet Rosenstein concerning the fourteen letters from Sylvia Plath to Dr. Ruth Beuscher was settled on 27 December 2017. The court case docket number is/was 1784CV00769-BLS; the case was dismissed with prejudice, the outcome of which was negotiated between the two sides. Anyone can visit the courthouse and review the records generated in the case. In the settlement, Rosenstein surrendered the letters she had been a custodian of since the early 1970s to Smith College. I have known about the fate of these letters since early January 2018 and that they would be allowed in the second volume of Plath's letters shortly thereafter.

I must, at this point, apologize to anyone and everyone who has asked me about them for I have lied my face off. But you have to understand, please, that I was expressly forbidden to discuss this matter.

However, as of 6 September 2018, when the second volume of The Letters of Sylvia Plath was published in England, these fourteen letters from Sylvia Plath to Dr. Ruth Beuscher will be open for research at Plath's alma mater, Smith College.

The Rosenstein archive, which I believe is still for sale though possibly not with the original bookseller and now without the letters, is a rich resource for the Plath scholar. It includes materials--including letters that Rosenstein denied us access to for inclusion in our volumes--that no one has ever had access to and we can only hope end up in a public archive. During the lawsuit, I was regularly going to the courthouse in Boston to review the documents that were being filed. To be honest I was hopeful that copies of the letters would be submitted as evidence. Perhaps that makes me a fool. I photographed a lot of the files in the docket and as the records are public documents, if anyone wants to see my photographs please let me know. The contents of the Rosenstein archive, though quite badly & sloppily cataloged by the original bookseller who tried to sell them, were briefly listed online. The lawsuit meant this inventory had to be removed from his website and the sale paused. Before this happened, though, I took a copy of it which will be the subject of a future blog post.

But this post is about the fourteen letters which were written between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963. Excerpts of them were serialized along with a hodgepodge of other letters on 27, 28, and 29 August 2018 in London's Daily Mail newspaper. The  letters are dated 18 February 1960, 2 April 1960, 7 November 1960, 4 January 1961, 27 March 1962, 11 July 1962, 20 July 1962, 30 July 1962, 4 September 1962, 22 September 1962, 29 September 1962, 9 October 1962, 21 October 1962, and 4 February 1963. They are initially rather social in nature but then naturally shift to concern over the upset in the marriage. Normally I would like to provide brief annotations on each letter but I think the wiser way to go about it in this instance is to encourage anyone interested to read the letters for themselves. And, if you can exhibit the patience of a saint, to read them as they come up in the chronological run of letters in the book. They form an integral part of Plath's epistolary life. Of course they can be made sense of on their own, but I found, having read them both ways, that reading them in the ordered narrative of the book provides much more of an understanding of the information they contain.

I am very happy that Frieda Hughes allowed the letters to be included and fully support her decision to do so. When you think about it, Plath's full journals, published in 2000, included her typed-up notes after therapy sessions, so there is a precedence for this kind of material to be made available to the public in print and at via the archive.

All links access 4 May 2018 and 29 August 2018.

The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963 Published Today

Today, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II: 1956-1963 is published by Faber and Faber in England. The book, edited by myself and Karen V. Kukil, concludes a very long journey that was years and years in the making. Before I forget---a reminder: the HarperCollins edition is scheduled for publication on Tuesday, 30 October. If you cannot wait until then, the Faber edition ships internationally via Amazon.co.uk and Book Depository, to name two sellers.

The Full Faber Cover

Volume II picks up on 28 October 1956, the day after Plath's 24th birthday, with the following exclamation: "What a lovely birthday I had!" (3). She's living still at Whitstead at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, and shortly into the volume she is moving in with her husband Ted Hughes to 55 Eltisley Avenue. The epistolary journey covers the conclusion of Plath's Fulbright; a teaching year at Smith College in Northampton; a writing year in Boston; a cross country journey and residence at Yaddo; moving back to England, the birth of two children and a miscarriage; the publication of two books and a lot of other writings; and the breakdown of her marriage and death.

There are 575 letters in Volume II to 108 correspondents. A breakdown of some of the letters:

• 18 letters to her parents-in-laws Edith and William Hughes (held by Frieda Hughes and previously unpublished and unknown to SP scholars); plus 8 other letters to Edith and William Hughes (also unpublished, but held in archives so possibly known);
• 11 letters to Olwyn Hughes; 12 letters to Gerald Hughes;
• 230 letters to Aurelia Schober Plath;
• First publication of Plath's professional correspondence with publishers and editors, sometimes revealing authorial intention of her works: 
• 18 letters to the BBC;
• 19 letters to The New Yorker; 
• 11 letters to the Critical Quarterly, primarily re: American Poetry Now, a pamphlet of poems edited by SP (1961) 
• 5 letters to Heinemann 
• And more! 
• 14 letters to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, her psychiatrist from 1953 onwards; and 
• 4 letters to Dido and W. S. Merwin.

There are five line drawings and many previously unpublished photographs. The images include some of the supporting documentation that was invaluable as I wrote the footnotes such as one of Plath's pocket calendars, a page of her submissions list, two pages from her Letts Diary Tablet for 1962.

The best part about having two different publishers in two different countries is there are twice as many reasons to celebrate. On 30 October 2018, when HarperCollins publishes their edition, featuring Plath's 1959 passport photo as the cover image, we can do this all over again!

All links accessed 31 July 2018.

This is Number Three: The Sylvia Plath Auction

The Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes Bonhams auction in March is the gift that keeps on giving, it seems. Because nearly one-quarter of all the lots were purchased jointly between two booksellers, dozens of items are appearing now individually for sale. This is how I procured two additional possessions of Frieda Hughes' in addition to Plath's fishing rod. In July I posted about the presentation copy of Alan C. Jenkins's White Horse, Black Bull, acquired from Modern First Editions. This blog post is about the third, and perhaps final, item from the auction which I have purchased.

I have always had an interest in uncorrected proofs of Plath's books. They represent a pre-first edition state, were printed in extremely limited quantities, and often serve as a bridge state between manuscript and first edition. Peter Harrington Books of London acquired Lot 377 which was comprised of thirteen total books. Eleven of them were lightly described in the Bonhams catalog leaving two out.

From the catalog:

1). The Bell Jar, small piece cut away from upper fore-corner of front free endpaper [Tabor A4a.3], 1966; 2.) idem, paperback edition, 1966, each signed by Frieda Hughes; 3.) idem, [Tabor A4b], New York, 1971; 4.) Crossing the Water, [Tabor A11a], 1971; 5.) idem, light marks at gutter margins of endpapers [Tabor A11b], New York, 1971; 6.) Winter Trees, [Tabor A15a], 1971; 7.) idem, [Tabor A15b], New York, 1972; 8.) Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, introduction by Ted Hughes [Tabor A21a], 1977; 9.) idem, [Tabor A21b], New York, 1979-- 10.) Sylvia Plath: Drawings. Introduced by Frieda Hughes, signed by Frieda Hughes, 2013, unless otherwise stated publisher’s cloth with dust-jackets, 8vo; and 11.) 3 others, including copy 121 (of 400) of Lyonnesse, Rainbow Press, 1971 (13)

So two books were not described. One of them appeared in a small catalogue Harrington produced and it had all the hallmarks of being something that would tempt me:

PLATH, Sylvia.
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Other Prose Writings.
London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1977

Octavo. Unbound and untrimmed sheets. Some light soiling, else in good condition.

Uncorrected proof copy, from the library of Ted Hughes, who collected the writings and contributed the introduction. Signature P is duplicated, with one signature having manuscript corrections by Hughes, corrections which were transferred into the final text. The sheets, without being marked with Hughes’s ownership, passed by descent to his daughter Frieda Hughes, and were auctioned at Bonhams among other Hughes family items in 2018.

The book was delivered to me in June and in July I sent it out to have a custom box made for it. I really adore having this, especially with the few hand-corrected typesetting mistakes.

And now for the box!

I needed a box for this as the signatures were unbound. This one I wanted in orange to kind of match the first Faber edition. It is a different color orange, but I'm ok with that. This box is stunning and it is not temporary.

All links accessed: 23 July 2018.

Letters of Sylvia Plath Serialized

The Daily Mail of London bought the rights to serialize The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II: 1956-1963 (Faber, published 6 September 2018).

On Saturday, 25 August 2018, they ran the first of the serials which was an edited down version of Frieda Hughes' long, considerate, and moving Foreword to the book: "Sylvia Plath's letters from the brink".

Excerpts from many letters were selected to be printed over three days. These paint their own small narrative but naturally are not completely representative of the content(s) of the full letters from which they were taken or the general tone of the book itself.

The first excerpt appeared online on Sunday the 26th and in print on 27 August 2018. The online headline: "'I want to kill this bloody girl to whom my misery is just sauce': Newly uncovered letters from SYLVIA PLATH reveal the moment her husband Ted Hughes’s mistress called her – bringing their marriage to a shattering end."

The second excerpt appeared online on Monday the 27th and in print on 28 August 2018. The online headline: "'I still love Ted — the knowledge I am ugly to him now just kills me': Newly discovered letters by Sylvia Plath reveal her heartbreak at the monstrous betrayal by Ted Hughes."

The third excerpt appeared online on Tuesday the 28th and in print on 29 August 2018. The online headline: "'Having been so very happy makes this harder than if I'd never known love at all': Sylvia Plath's joy and torment laid bare in the last letters she ever wrote."

HarperCollins will publish The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963 on 30 October 2018.

All links accessed 25 August 2018.