On the 16th of June (Bloomsday and Plath's anniversary), I posted a trivia quiz which, sadly, went unanswered. Therefore, the $2 (£1.00270, €1.26984) cash prize goes to me. 1) Between the Fall of 1948 and August 1949, how many boys did Sylvia Plath date? A: 37 B: 25 C: 21 D: 16 E: 99 (the sum of A-D) F: None of the above Answer: The answer to question 1 is C, 21. In Plath's 1949 journal, held at the Lilly Library, Plath lists all her dates for posterity. The 1949 journal is the first of its kind; her private thoughts and writing prior to this being more diary-like. Do you know what I mean in differentiating them? For those who have read Plath's early diaries, you will. The 1949 writing seems more sophisticated and and deeper. This is when Plath wrote her now famous statement: "I think I would like to call myself 'the girl that wanted to be God.'" 2) True or False: Prior to Sylvia Plath's breakdown and suicide attempt in 1953 and the subsequent therapy...

Sylvia Plath entered - and tied for first place - the Kathryn Irene Glascock Poetry Contest in April 1955 . Her poems were judged by Marianne Moore, John Ciardi, and Wallace Fowlie. Of all the contestants that year, Lynne Lawner appears to be the only other other poet who has made a name for herself. Later, Plath was herself a judge of the Glascock in 1959 ! The translated title of Plath's novel The Bell Jar into German ( Die Glasglocke ), Norwegian ( Glasklokken ), and Swedish ( Glaskupan ) all sound and look like Glascock. Nothing important there, I don't think, just something perhaps interesting.

Geoffrey Brock's poem " Daddy: 1933 " appears in the current Poetry (June 2008). The bulk of the poem comes from Otto Emil Plath's classic treatise, Bumblebees and Their Ways (New York: MacMillan, 1934). The Glen Falls Post Star recently ran an article on Yaddo which mentioned Plath and a few of the poems she wrote about the writer's colony ("The Manor Garden," "The Burnt-Out Spa" and "Yaddo: The Grand Manor"). The New York Times asked critic and author Katha Pollitt Stray Questions . Pollitt & Plath frequently appear together in The New York Times . The National Post (Canada) has an article ("The Book of revelation" ) in which writers discuss beloved novels that have inspired or informed their own works. Ibi Kaslik's is Plath's The Bell Jar . Kaslik's comments on the novel are interesting. The childhood home of Ted Hughes at Number one Aspinal Street, in Mytholmroyd, England, is featured in T...

Bloomsbury Auctions in New York are offering through eBay a signed typescript by Sylvia Plath, a work entitled "Aunt Rennie and the Elves". It also features two illustrations pasted to the paper.

After a brief three day research visit to the Sylvia Plath mss . housed at the Lilly Library in Bloomington , Indiana, I learned, or re-learned, some things about Sylvia Plath. 1) Between the Fall of 1948 and August 1949, how many boys did Sylvia Plath date? A: 37 B: 25 C: 21 D: 16 E: 99 (the sum of A-D) F: None of the above 2) True or False: Prior to Sylvia Plath's breakdown and suicide attempt in 1953 and the subsequent therapy - which continued in person through 1959 - she had a decent opinion about her childhood? Please support your answer with a compelling statement or argument. Please post your answers and opinions to the Comments feature available! I'll post my answers/opinions later this week I hope!

At the Lilly Library, Sylvia Plath is one of the Queen's. I am here to do research, but also to meet with Bill Buckley and Kathleen Connors regarding Plath Profiles . The issue is almost fully assembled, and the website is still being developed. Hopefully after some meetings and a few days time, there will be a better sense of when it might be unleashed/unveiled to you!

The new book cover for Plath's Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams appeared on Amazon.com recently. It is a much nicer looking cover than their year 2000 offering . Y2K! This new re-issue of Johnny Panic is scheduled to be published on 12 August, along with a re-issue of The Collected Poems . Faber re-issued The Colossus on 3 April 2008. And, this is as good a time as any to re-list other 2008 publications. We were teased and disappointed last year when Linda Wagner-Martin's Sylvia Plath's Poetry was listed but not released. This will be issued by Continuum International Publishing Group, hopefully, on 7 August. Jo Gill is the editor of The Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath ; which is different than the Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath , which was published in 2005. If you do not have the Cambridge Companion please treat yourself; it is a wonderful collection of original essays by leading scholars. The Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath is scheduled...

The Guardian recently ran an article on Frieda Hughes in a series called Pieces of me , which includes a 15 image gallery. The gallery includes comments by Hughes about her parents and her work. Recently found an article by Jessica Lewis Luck entitled: "Exploring the 'Mind of the Hive': Embodied cognition in Sylvia Plath's bee poems". The article appears to be available to anyone (but if it isn't, I apologize). The article appeared in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 26.2 (2007) 287-308. Several weeks ago I mentioned an article that ran in the Daily Hampshire Gazette about the Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium at Smith College. If you want access to this article, it is available by clicked the Cached option in your Google search (search terms "Plath Smith Daily Hampshire"). Lastly, the website for Plath Profiles is being developed. There are going to be about 30 submissions for the first issue. This includes wonder...