Sylvia Plath made the headlines 54 years ago

Update: At the time I wrote the post below in 2007, the information presented was the best that I had. Since that point, I have done extensive research into the subject of Sylvia Plath's disappearance and first suicide attempt in August 1953. The result of this research was published in a paper called "'They Had to Call and Call': The Search for Sylvia Plath" which appearaed in Plath Profiles 3, published in Summer 2010.

54 years ago, Plath disappeared. The local Boston, Wellesley and Massachusetts newpapers ran a number of articles on her disappearance. The articles ran in various editions of the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and the Townsman, of Wellesley.

The suicide attempt occured for a number of reasons. Plath retold the events in The Bell Jar. The lines from her poem "Lady Lazarus" chill its readers,

"The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls."

Below is a list of articles on the search for Sylvia Plath.

The Boston Daily Globe ran the article, “Beautiful Smith Girl Missing at Wellesley” on 25 August 1953.

The Boston Globe ran the article, “Day-Long Search Fails to find Smith Student” on 26 August 1953.

The Boston Evening Globe ran the article, “Police, Boy Scouts Hunt Missing Smith Student” on 25 August, 1953. They also ran “Smith Student Found Alive in Cellar” on 26 August, 1953.

The Boston Herald ran the article, “Top-ranking student at Smith missing from Wellesley Home” on 25 August 1953.

The Boston Herald ran the article “Sleeping Pills missing with Wellesley Girl” On 26 August 1953.

The Boston Herald ran the article, “Wellesley Girl Found in Cellar: Suffers from overdose of sleeping pills” on 27 August 1953. Also on 27 August, they ran the article, “Honor Student 'Out of Danger' Took Sleep Pills”.

The Townsman (Wellesley) ran the article, “Missing Smith Girl Worried” on 26 August 1953.

The Townsman (Wellesley) ran the article, “Sylvia Plath Found In Good Condition” on 27 August 1953.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette ran the article, “Hunt for missing Smith honor student who left on 'long hike' fruitless” on 25 August 1953.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette ran the article, “Carry on search for Plath girl” on 26 August 1953.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette ran the article, “Condition good of Smith senior who took pills” on 27 August 1953.

Also interesting are articles that ran during the month of June 1953 on the subject of the Rosenbergs execution. On 20 June, the day after the execution, the New York Times front page ran the article, "Rosenbergs Executed As Atom Spies After Supreme Court Vacates Stay; Last-Minute Please To President Fails." Pictures of Julius and Ethel stare out at its readers.

You can see a bibliography of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt, and read PDF's of them, over at A celebration, this is.

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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