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Sylvia Plath collections: Houghton Mifflin Company Collection of papers on Bitter Fame

In addition to the Edward Butscher collection of papers related to Sylvia Plath, Smith College's Mortimer Rare Book Room holds the Houghton Mifflin Company Collection of papers on Bitter Fame. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath is the controversial and authorized 1989 biography of Plath written by Anne Stevenson. Stevenson notes in the text that Olwyn Hughes, Ted's sister, contributed so much to the text that she considers it "a work of dual-authorship".

The collection is nine boxes deep. Box 1 contains separate series of correspondence of Peter Davison, Olwyn Hughes, and Anne Stevenson. There are multiple correspondents within each subseries. Some of the correspondents are Trevor Thomas and E. Lucas Myers.

Boxes 2-9 contain Bitter Fame which is arranged in the order of creation, beginning with legal papers, successive drafts of the book, illustrations, a copy of the dust jacket, press clippings and other fragile faxes.

I worked with the collection a number of years ago while on a research trip at Smith. The correspondence contains business-related information but also Plath-related information and is quite interesting. The drafts of Bitter Fame is also interesting for some of the material omitted from the final version.
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