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Sylvia Plath "Did you know..."

Did you know that as Sylvia Plath prepared to graduate from Newnham College at Cambridge University in 1957, after two years of studying and writing, she submitted to the English faculty a manuscript of poems entitled "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea"? This has come to be known as "The Cambridge Manuscript". She formed this poetry collection over the course of her Fulbright years, and sent various versions out to publishers in the US, in particular, to the Yale Series of Younger Poets, which she failed to win year after year.

The manuscript was lost for about a decade, but it was found around 1967/8. In their 7 February 1969 issue, The Cambridge Review ran a number of essays on Plath. A. Alvarez submitted a short essay entitled "Sylvia Plath: The Cambridge Collection" on the poems, and printed along side the essay in this issue were the following poems, "Street song," "Natural history," "Resolve," and "Aerialist." Other articles in the issue were: "In extremis" by George Steiner, "Sylvia Plath and the problem of violence in art" by David Holbrook, "I am I" by Eric Homberger, and "Rememberinng Sylvia" by the cryptic M.W.C. If anyone can sort out who M.W.C. is, please let me know.
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  1. Anonymous29 June, 2007 14:30

    I like these Sylvia Plath "Did you know..."

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  2. Jonty22 August, 2021 18:31

    MWC was Margaret Wendy Campbell née Elton Mills 1923-2009, then married to Bernard Campbell an Anthropology professor at St Johns, long-time friend of Sylvia who hated Ted and also incidentally my mother. Your attention has probably long since shifted, but I found your question while looking for a copy of Sylvia Remembered since our copy of the Cambridge Review cannot longer be found. Should you know of a link to it, I should be most grateful!

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