Sylvia Plath collections: Sylvia Plath Collection, Smith College

The Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College holds the impressive, important Sylvia Plath Collection, 1940-1981.

From the abstract,

"The collection contains approximately 4,000 pages of Plath's manuscripts and typescripts. This includes a group of 67 poems in successive draft that are part of the Ariel poems. Also drafts of early poems, some with notes by Alfred Young Fisher. There are typescripts of The Bell Jar. Also drafts of articles, broadcasts, reviews and short stories. There are her journals, drawings and correspondence.

Correspondence includes letters to and/or from Al Alvarez, Dorothy Schober Benotti, Ruth Barnhouse, Ruth Fainlight, Ann Davidow Goodman Hayes, Elinor Friedman Klein, Philip Emerald McCurdy, Enid Epstein Mark, James Michie, Marianne Moore, Howard Moss, Hans-Joachim Neupert, Aurelia Schober Plath, Otto Emil Plath, Olive Higgins Prouty, G. Jon Rosenthal, Stevie Smith, Marcia Brown Stern, and other friends, publishers and editors.

Also memorabilia from childhood, school and adult life. Included in the realia is her English elm writing board, furniture she painted and her typewriter."

More information:
General information about the collection: Access is unrestricted, unless otherwise noted.

Organization: Organized in 15 series:
1. Writings
2. Correspondence
3. Personal papers
4. School papers
5. Artwork
6. Ted Hughes
7. Olwyn Hughes
8. Aurelia Plath
9. Otto Plath
10. Articles about Sylvia Plath
11. Reviews of Sylvia Plath's work
12. Audio visual materials
13. Photographs
14. Realia
15. Oversize

I have had the priviledge to use this collection many times in the last nine years. It is an extraordinary repository, and the staff is friendly and knowledgeable.

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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