Unfinished drawing by Sylvia Plath

International Autograph Auctions Europe had an auction today of Autograph Letters, Historical Documents & Manuscripts. Sylvia Plath's unfinished drawing of a village church and cart was in Lot 437. Ted Hughes signed the back as a way to authenticate it as being drawn by his first wife.

The estimate placed on the drawing was €2,400 - €3,600. This is roughly $2,173 - $3,912 and £1,847 - £3,325.

The drawing sold for €3,000 /$3,257.78 /£2,758.86.

All links accessed 24-25 March 2020.

Unfinished Sylvia Plath Drawing at Auction

Next week, on 25 March 2020, an unfinished drawing by Sylvia Plath will be up for auction via International Autograph Auctions Europe S.L. The official Lot number is Lot 437. Bidding can be done online. As far as I can tell the auction is going forward.

The description for the auction reads:

PLATH SYLVIA: (1932-1963) American Poet, wife of Ted Hughes from 1956 until her death. A good, original pencil drawing, unsigned, one page, 8vo, n.p., n.d. Plath has drawn an appealing image of an old street scene with an empty wooden cart abandoned in the foreground and several buildings in the immediate background including a church tower, the spire of which features a cross at its highest point and which Plath has carefully heightened in dark fountain pen ink. Annotated and signed to the verso in pencil, 'By Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes', by her husband, the English Poet Laureate. Any original item in the hand of Plath is extremely rare and desirable as a result of the poet's tragic suicide at the age of 30. Some very light, extremely minor foxing and a few very minor creases to the corners, VG £2000-3000 The present drawing is one of just a small handful by Plath in existence, and most likely dates from the late 1950s, shortly after her marriage to Hughes. The poet was an artist of some talent, and Hughes wrote of her artistic nature in Birthday Letters - 'Drawing calmed you. Your poker infernal pen Was like a branding iron. Objects Suffered into their new presence, tortured Into final position. As you drew I felt released, calm. Time opened When you drew the market at Benidorm. I sat near you, scribbling something. Hours burned away. The stall-keepers Kept coming to see you had them properly. We sat on those steps in our rope-soles, And were happy…' -'Drawing'

This particular drawing appeared at auction at least once before on 13 July 2006 via Sotheby's. It sold for £900. That day four other drawings, some complete and some not, appeared as well.

You can read more about Sotheby's Past Sylvia Plath Lots if you desire.

Thanks to Peter Fydler for tweeting about the auction and thus notifying us about the forthcoming sale.

All links accessed 3 March 2020.

CFP: Edited Collection: A Self to Recover: Negotiating Sylvia Plath and Disability

The following Call for Papers is by Maria Rovito, a Graduate Assistant and PhD student in American Studies at Penn State University. ~pks


As the author Sylvia Plath exists within the Anglophone canon as the quintessential "madwoman" and tragic figure of mental illness and suicidality, new theoretical arguments must be made in order to unpack the question of illness within Plath's life and work. Although we view Plath as a woman with mental illness, we do not view her as a woman who was disabled, and who experienced other corporeal impairments beside her psychic pain. Not only this, but Plath has been unfairly pathologized by previous and current scholars, who only seek to analyze her poetry and writing using a medical analysis. This has influenced not only the cultural understandings of Plath, but how students treat her work as well. Ultimately, these practices have harmed both Plath as a cultural figure and the disabled Plath reader who is traumatized by these readings. Previous accounts of Plath scholarship that have focused on her mental illness include Edward Butscher's Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (1976), arguing that Plath "suffered" from narcissism, a split personality, and psychosis. David Holbrook's Sylvia Plath: Poetry and Existence (1976) also medicalizes Plath's work and pathologizes her, as Holbrook states that Plath was a "schizoid." Anne Stevenson's biography of Plath, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (1989), argued that Plath dealt with paranoia, violent mood swings, a split personality and hysteria. Although these previous accounts of Plath and her work have unfairly pathologized her, this trend of medicalizing Plath still exist today.

Disability studies scholars have rejected this medicalized terminology and thinking, and have attempted to bring attention to this practice of pathologization in their work. As the disability studies scholar Michael Bérubé states, disability studies limits itself when it is only concerned with searching for diagnoses within authors and literary characters: it "need not and should not predicate its existence as a practice of criticism by reading a literary text in one hand and the DSM-5 in the other" (20). Moving beyond this tradition of pathologizing Plath, Plath scholars must seek to integrate these disabled perspectives in their work, and challenge the medical authority that influenced Plath's life, work, and cultural legacy.

New research within the intersections of Plath scholarship and disability studies can help us (re)imagine the questions of illness, disability, and impairment that permeates Plath's poetry, letters, journals, and novel. Ultimately, this collection will serve as a collaborative account where Plath's work can be critically investigated by disability, crip, and Mad studies scholars, and where discourses within disability studies can enter the Plath canon of scholarship. This is much needed within both Plath studies and disability studies, and this collection will serve as a starting point for many students, junior, and established Plath and disability studies scholars. Pieces may focus on a range of topics, including:

• Plath and the asylum
• Plath and electroshock therapy
• Plath and madness/mental illness/mental disability
• Plath and self-identifying as disabled
• Plath and psychiatric consumers/survivors/ex-patients (C/S/X)
• Plath and physical embodiment
• Plath and eating disorders
• Plath and menstruation
• The figure of Plath as a "madwoman"
• The issue of suicidality in the Plath canon

Bringing together disability studies scholars, Plath scholars, and disabled Plath readers, this collection will move beyond previous medicalized and pathologizing readings of Plath, and consider how disability studies can aid our understanding of Plath and her work.

Proposals should include author's name, a brief biographical statement, and a 500-word abstract. Please send these materials to Maria Rovito (mrr354@psu.edu) and Jessica Mason (jlmason1@buffalo.edu).

Proposals due: July 16th, 2020.

Conditional acceptances: July 31st, 2020.

Manuscripts due: December 31st, 2020.

Works Cited

Bérubé, Michael. The Secret Life of Stories: From Don Quixote to Harry Potter, How Understanding Intellectual Disability Transforms the Way We Read. New York and London: NYU Press, 2018. Print.

Butscher, Edward. Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness. Tucson, AZ: Schaffner Press, Inc., 1976. Print.

Holbrook, David. Sylvia Plath: Poetry and Existence. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1976. Print.

Stevenson, Anne. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Print.

Guest Blog Post: Sylvia Plath Collections: The Newnham File

The following is a guest blog post by Di Beddow, who is currently researching "The Cambridge of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath" at Queen Mary University London, on a recently found collection of papers by and about Sylvia Plath. Thank you, Di! ~pks

Cambridge can be cruel in the Winter as Sylvia Plath tells us in her letter of January 1956: "the atrocious food, the damp cold & the unsimpatico people" (Letters Vol I, 1080). During the worst of times then, meeting up with the archivist at Newnham College recently (we became friends after finding much in common after my first visit to the archive) she told me that because of building work that had taken place at the college, she had uncovered a file which might cheer me a little. As luck would have it, Anne Thomson found the file of alumna, Sylvia Plath, who had attended the college as a Fulbright student from October 1955 to June 1957. Anne read through the file and appreciating that it contained very personal information, consulted with the college records board and suggested that she advise Frieda Hughes, Plath's daughter, of the finding. Frieda looked at copies of the file and found it poignant; she agreed that it could be viewed by Plath scholars, but because of its intimate nature, she asked that copying and photography should not be allowed. Later then, in February, Anne allowed me to see these papers as she knew that my thesis on the Cambridge of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes would benefit from such material. She was right.

The file comprises a college registration form, completed in October 1954, with the date of intended entry to Newnham being the following year. Anne had arranged the enclosed documents chronologically; inside this form and apart from letters of reference from Smith and a statement of purpose by Plath as she applied for her funding, there are three letters which are not included in the excellent Letters of Sylvia Plath. One is to Edith Crystal at Newnham, (dated October 20 1954) requesting affiliation to the college; the second is six months later to the Principal of Newnham at the time, Ruth Cohen and the third, just a month later is again to Ruth Cohen. However, as Plath had now heard that she had been accepted to the college, she is now eager in this letter, to gain suggestions for summer reading and to wonder whether in her room she will need to sort, "bookcases, or lamps." In her statement of purpose she writes, "I plan to become a college teacher upon completing graduate work abroad and I hope to share and interpret intelligently the knowledge and experience acquired in England by bringing back to America a rich, vital appreciation of British culture as well as British literature." Plath shows the foresight and determination to achieve her goals that we see of her again and again when she looked, for example, for publication of her work or her husband's Ted Hughes (she met Hughes in Cambridge in February 1956; they were married in June of the same year.) She gathers together some of her most positive contacts and requests they refer her to Newnham; she also asks that in a medical reference, that the Smith doctor, Marion Booth is brutally honest about the applicant's attempted suicide in the late summer of 1953. Booth writes that the McLean hospital cites "delayed adolescent turmoil" as the cause for her depression and that the prognosis for recovery is "excellent." She refers to Plath, saying that she was keen for her to be straight-talking with the university as she wanted "consideration of her to be made 'with their eyes open.'"

The academic and character references are even more poignant: Evelyn Page from Smith writes, "Her fault is to demand too much of herself and to react too intensely", but she finishes that she has, "no reason to qualify my respect and admiration for her." Ruth Beuscher, Plath's psychiatrist claims that during the summer of 1953 Plath was, "suffering from a state of mental turmoil which is highly unlikely ever to recur" and Elizabeth Drew from Smith tells the admissions office at Cambridge: "She is outstanding in both personality and intellectual gifts." Mary Ellen Chase calls her a "literary artist" and Marion Booth, writing in her medical capacity, but also from knowing Plath from the Student Honor Board at Smith, states that she is "not psychotic" and that she had made a sustained recovery, whilst Gladys Anslow, Director of Graduate Studies at Smith, believes Plath to have the ability to check her own mood and "that she would be the first one to recognise any difficulties and to take measures to offset a recurrence."

When from Cambridge Plath applies to renew her Fulbright scholarship, Irene Morris, Plath's tutor at the time, describes a student who has settled well, made friends and is, "very easy to deal with; she is reliable and considerate and has an engaging friendly manner. She is an asset to the College." The college secretary completes the file, updating Irene Morris of Plath's progress through Newnham; she finishes: "As you remembered, she had a room at the top of the house which she liked very much and she was very thrilled with the view from her window over the gardens."

Some of these documents will not be new to scholars who have studied Plath in the archives of America, but it is important that the file has been uncovered in the college here in England, which Plath describes as the "home of the writers I most admire."

Di Beddow (website | twitter)
4 March 2020

My thanks to Anne Thomson for allowing me to study the file and also of course to Frieda Hughes for the permission to use such personal and sensitive material about her mother.

All links accessed 4 March 2020.

Carl Rollyson's The Last Days of Sylvia Plath

Carl Rollyson (website | Twitter) has had a passionate interest in Sylvia Plath for a long time. In 2013, he published his first biography of her as American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath (St. Martin's Press). And he has followed this up with a second exploration into the life and afterlife of Sylvia Plath in the recently published The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (University Press of Mississippi).

The book was scheduled to be published later this month, but this morning I learned while on Amazon that the book was published on 18 February. I immediately bought the Kindle edition because at $9, how could I resist!?

So this post about the publication is overdue and I apologize for the late notice.

ISBN: 978-1496821225. 264 pages. Cover price: $25.00. The book is available in hardback and in a Kindle edition.

From the Amazon page:

Book Description
Rollyson has written a unique, vital contribution to Plath studies. In many ways it’s a microbiography of Sylvia Plath, concentrating solely on the marriage and last years of Plath’s life. Rollyson offers original reading and interpretation of Plath’s works, her life, and some of the drama that surrounds her afterlife. The real value in this book lies in Rollyson’s use of archival materials, some of which are available to a large audience for the first time.

The Last Days of Sylvia Plath highlights how a writer can be shaped after their death and the subsequent fallout from posthumous literary editing. Rollyson’s inclusion of previously unused primary sources and extended discussion of Susan Fromberg Schaeffer’s Poison, a work not applied to Plath’s life and afterlife in any detail before, offers new angles and interpretations.

About the Author
Carl Rollyson is professor emeritus of journalism at Baruch College, CUNY. He is author of a dozen biographies, including American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath; Amy Lowell Anew: A Biography; A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan; Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews; and Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Revised and Updated, the latter three published by University Press of Mississippi. His reviews of biography have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New Criterion, and other major periodicals.

Also by Carl:

Carl is simultaneously publishing The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934 (University of Virginia Press). This is Volume I. Volume II will be out later.

All links accessed 1 March 2020.

Sylvia Plath's copy of e.e. cummings' i six nonlectures

Several years ago I worked with Sylvia Plath's copy of Ayn Rand's novel The Foutainhead. In a blog post about that experience, I made a table listing the page numbers on which she made annotations and comments. Too little attention has been paid to Plath's annotations.

I had in mind when I did the aforementioned blog post to spend more time with Plath's library but the whole Letters of Sylvia Plath project kind of took over my life. Part of the thrill of The Fountainhead was that it was, and still is, held privately so it was a privilege to both work with it and present the information to you.

However, for this blog post, I chose to do a book held by Smith College: e.e. cummings i six nonlectures (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954). Plath was given this copy in 1955 by her Smith classmater Sue Weller with the inscription:

for Syl,
in memory of a
delightfully, indolent
spring vacation.
Sue–
1955

I should remind you that I reassembled, via LibraryThing, a catalogue all the books Plath owned, read, used for papers, mentioned, etc.).

Below is a table of page numbers and the kinds of annotations that appear on each page respectively.

Page	Annotation type (underline, star, marginal line, text)
ffep	Inscription by Sue Weller
3	Vertical line in left margin
4	Underline
5	Underline
7	Underlines; two stars: one in left margin; one in right margin
12	Underlines
15	Underlines
16	Underlines
18	Underlines
19	Underlines
20	Underlines
23	Underlines; Vertical line in left margin
24	Underlines; Double vertical line in left margin
26	Underlines
27	Underlines; Vertical line in left margin
29	Underlines
30	Underline
32	Underline
35	Underline
38	Underlines
43	Underlines
45	Underline
47	Underlines; Vertical bracket in left margin; Vertical line in left margin
51	Underlines
52	Underline
53	Underlines; Vertical line in left margin
54	Underline
68	Underline
69	Underlines
111	Underlines; Star in right margin

All links accessed 31 July 2019.

Sylvia Plath reading her poems

On 22 February 1959, Sylvia Plath read seventeen of her poems which Stephen Fassett recorded for Harvard University. The original reel-to-reel tapes are held by the Houghton Library and were digitized back in the early 2000s. When I worked for the Woodberry Poetry Room I would relish any opportunity I had to go and see the tapes, still in their original boxes.

Plath wrote the names of the poems she read on the back of the box. Beneath the last poem, "Point Shirley" she added a little flourish. And dividing the columns, she drew a little face. Fassett (presumably) even wrote along the side of the box "(Titles listed by Sylvia Plath)."

The Fassett recording studio was located at 24 Chestnut Street, Beacon Hill, just around the corner from Plath's apartment at 9 Willow Street.

 

If you are interested in Plath's poetry recordings, please consider heading over to A celebration, this is to read more.

All links accessed 12 February 1963.

Sylvia Plath's Funeral

Sylvia Plath was buried in Heptonstall on this day, 18 February 1963. Very little has been published about the funeral. It was touched upon in Jillian Becker’s Giving Up, as well as in some biographies.

Warren Plath wrote a letter to his mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, two days after it, from 23 Fitzroy Road, where he and his wife were staying with Frieda and Nicholas. It is impossible to comprehend how staying there must have felt, knowing it was where his sister died just 9 days previous.

In the letter, Warren wrote that Plath’s funeral was “much better as an experience than we had dared to hope, and I think even Sylvia would have found it simple and beautiful.” He mentions there was a brief service in the chapel at a funeral home in Hebden Bridge. He described the chapel as “grey with soot on the outside, but light and cheerful inside”.

Present in addition to Warren and Margaret Plath and Ted Hughes were William Hughes, Walter and Alice Farrar, cousin Vicky and her husband David, and a “dear couple from London, the Beckers”. There was another small service in the church in Heptonstall followed by the burial and high tea in Hebden Bridge. The small turn out may have been a result of Plath's death receiving little to no notice in the London papers. Just a day previous, in fact, Al Alvarez published his his article "A Poet's Epitaph" in The Observer which printed a photo of Plath holding Frieda and four of her most recent poems.

Warren Plath's letter is held by the Lilly Library, Indiana University at Bloomington.

Talking Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Research with Gail Crowther

The following is a Q & A with Gail Crowther, author of many wonderful essays and books on Sylvia Plath. Her current project is a joint biography under the working title of Kicking at the Door of Fame, which explores the social rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. The book is under contract with Simon & Schuster.

1. What was your familiarity level like with Anne Sexton before you started working on Kicking at the Door of Fame?

I wasn't as familiar with Sexton as Plath. I had read many of her poems and I'd read the Diane Middlebrook biography. I'd also visited her house in Weston and had a few extra dry martinis in The Ritz back in 2011. But my knowledge of her was mostly based on those moments when her life and work collided with Plath's, so she was less familiar to me as a woman and poet in her own right.

2. As you researched Sexton, did anything surprise you about her work, life, character?

Many many things surprised me about her and they kind of run parallel with Plath in a way. First of all, while appreciating her complexity, like Plath, her humour seems to have been massively overlooked. Working in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center, I was constantly chortling and laughing out loud, mainly at her letters. Working in the archive also brought home to me just how hard she worked and crafted her poems, and how hard other people saw her work – sometimes re-writing a poem twenty or more times until she was happy with it. I also got a real sense of what she was up against – male critics, sneery reviewers, because she was a woman daring to write about her lived experiences. I saw how that hurt her and how despite that she carried on writing with huge amounts of bravery and courage. But as I mentioned, there was also a complexity about her that I sometimes found quite difficult to handle. She could be the kindest and cruellest person. She could be the most loving person, then the nastiest. Her own childhood was complicated, and in some cases, traumatic, and she passed that onto her own children. These are very difficult, sensitive topics, but ones that have to be confronted with honesty and compassion.

3. In the archive, did you get a sense of Sexton that is different from Plath, whose archive as we know is so split up between repositories?

No I don't think so. Obviously Sexton was a very different character. More flamboyant than Plath and certainly I think more socially daring. But the experience of being in the archive was just as immersive. I read her letters and poems, handled her personal effects, and listened to her speaking and singing (drunkenly). It was an intense five days and I felt very sad saying goodbye to her. I guess if anything the main difference is when I first went into the Plath archives I already felt as though I 'knew' Plath (whatever we mean by that as a reader) whereas with Sexton I felt I got to know her much more through her archive, so perhaps that was the biggest difference.

4. Why do you think Sexton scholarship isn't as robust as Plath's? Or is it and I'm just not paying attention?

I think it is as robust, but it is just not as prolific. I don't know the reason for that. Certainly in the UK it may well be because, astonishingly, her books are out of print. It's a difficult question really. I suspect there are a number of interlinked reasons; researchers, writers, marketing, publishers…

5. Looking at their work... Which first book ranks higher: Sexton's To Bedlam and Part Way Back or Plath's The Colossus? And, whose second book was better: Sexton's All My Pretty Ones or Plath's Ariel? Or are these unfair questions?

Haha you're not going to draw me on that one! I think to rate their books in that way does Plath and Sexton a disservice, mainly because I think we should see them as two women who were trying to achieve very similar goals. Once they realised this, they offered each other support and encouragement. And they both influenced each other massively – initially Sexton on Plath, and then after Ariel, Plath on Sexton. I like to see their poems running alongside each other, playfully exchanging ideas and moods, each impressed by the other, a sort of symbiotic poetical sisterhood sticking two fingers up at dreadful societal norms.

6. From where you began the idea for Kicking at the Door of Fame (the concept, the proposal, etc.) to now, has anything changed about the way you envisioned this book appearing?

Yes, I guess any book transforms and changes as you start work on it, and sometimes even with the best planning in the world, as you begin to write, new ideas occur, or you see links and patterns that didn't appear at the planning stage. For me that's the exciting part of writing, feeling something coming into being and not being too rigid about it. In the case of writing about Plath, there is the emergence all the time of new material as well, and so that can really add new information or perspectives as it becomes available. I expect that more changes will happen the further I get into the book and then my agent, Carrie, and editor, Alison, will also bring new angles, so it's an ongoing process, flexible, collaborative, but ultimately, always, celebratory.

Thank you, Gail. We all wish you continued inspiration as you work on Kicking at the Door of Fame.

Books by Gail Crowther:

Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year’s Turning (2014) (with Elizabeth Sigmund)

The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath (2017)

These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath (2017) (wth Peter K. Steinberg)

All links accessed 25 January 2020.

Sylvia Plath Collections: Boxes 3 and 4

As promised, here are the item lists for boxes 3 and 4 of the Harriet Rosenstein research files on Sylvia Plath, which I hope helps to provide addition access to the materials as listed in the collection's finding aid.  And a reminder that some folders were skipped.

Box 3

Folder 1: Evelyn Page

Folder 2: Robert T. Peterson

Folder 3: Aurelia Plath

Folder 4: Otto Plath

Folder 5: Otto Plath

Folder 6: Otto Plath

Folder 7: Otto Plath

Folder 8: Sylvia Plath articles by

Folder 9: Sylvia Plath letters

Folder 10: Sylvia Plath McLean Hospital record

Folder 12: Pat O'Neill Pratson

Folder 13: Alison Prentice

Folder 14: Paul and Clarissa Roche

Folder 15: Harriet Rosenstein doctoral prospectus and book proposal

Box 4

Folder 1: Harriet Rosenstein draft fragments

Folder 2: General correspondence

Folder 3: Shorthand notes

Folder 4: Jon Rosenthal

Folder 5: M. L. Rosenthal

Folder 6: Richard Sassoon

Folder 7: David and Lorna Secker-Walker

Folder 8: Anne Sexton

Folder 9: Margaret Shook

Folder 10: Elizabeth Sigmund

Folder 11: Alison V. Smith

Folder 13: Nancy Hunter Steiner

Folder 14: William Sterling

Folder 15: Marcia Brown Stern (letters from Plath)

Folder 16: Marcia Brown Stern

Folder 17: Anthony Thwaite

Folder 18: Aileen Ward

Folder 19: Fay Weldon

Folder 20: Richard Wertz

Folder 21: Eric Walter White

Folder 22: Ruth Whitman

Folder 23: J. Mallory Wober

Folder 24: J. Melvin Woody

All links accessed 7 February 2020