Sylvia Plath collections: Emory University

The Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University, Atlanta Georgia, owns the Ted Hughes Papers, 1940-1997. These papers include "correspondence, writings by Hughes, materials relating to Sylvia Plath, writings by other authors, subject files, printed material, photographs, personal effects and memoriabilia, and audio-visual materials". In this collection is a separate series of materials by Sylvia Plath.

The Plath materials, in Series 3, "consists of materials relating to Sylvia Plath including writings (poetry and prose) by Plath, writings by others about Plath, printed material by and about Plath including reviews of her works, materials relating to books published after Plath's death, and information regarding the Plath holdings at Smith College and Indiana University."

"Any material relating to Sylvia Plath that was found on the verso of another item elsewhere in the collection was photocopied and added to this series, with a note on the bottom as to where the original item is located in the collection."

The Plath materials are organized in the following way: Poems, Prose, Posthumous books, printed materials, writings by others; holdings in other repositories, and other material. Other material is my favorite way to classify the hodge-podge that inevitably enters an archive with any set of papers.

Several years ago I requested photocopies of some of the materials in the collection, and found the archivist I dealt with to be friendly and efficient. It was in part due to interactions with her that I am now studying to be an archivist. The entire collection is worthy of review if you find yourself in the Atlanta area.

The finding aid to the Ted Hughes papers is online here. The Plath materials are in Series 3. The picture above is taken from here.

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'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

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

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