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Links, reviews, etc. - Week ending 19 July 2008

In June, Bloomsbury New York held an auction and one of the items for sale was "Aunt Rennie and the Elves" by Sylvia Plath. The 3 page, 49-lined story, typed and signed "By Sylvia" was composed in 1943. Bidding closed at $4,000 on 19 June. The winner is unknown at this time.

Sally Bayley recently had published "‘I Need a Master’: Sylvia Plath Reads D. H. Lawrence" in the journal English 2008, 57: 127-144. Copies are available at many university libraries, through Interlibrary loan, and at select bookstores.

Frances Wilson reviewed Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual by edited by Kathleen Connors and Sally Bayley in the December 2007/January 2008 issue of Literary Review. Look for it on pages 34-5. In the same issue, on pages 43-44, there appears a review of The Letters of Ted Hughes by Alan Brownjohn.

Three citations for essays I recently found include:

Chapman, W. K. "Last Respects: The Posthumous Editing of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath." The South Carolina Review. 2006: 65-71.

Hwang, J.H. 2007. "Women's Space and Silenced Voices during the Cold War in Sylvia Plath's Poetry." Feminist Studies in English Literature. 15 (2): 65-86.

Jackson, Anna. Sylvia Plath's "'Exaggerated American grin': Anti-American Sentiment and the reception of Plath's poetry." Journal of Transatlantic Studies. Autumn 2007: 117-132.

Though it is several years old, I stumbled upon Anne Stevenson's review of The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950 – 1962. London: Faber. The review appeared in Thumbscrew 16, Summer 2000. A general search of the poetrymagazine.org.uk website finds 59 hits when "Sylvia Plath" is typed in a keyword search.

A review by David Orr of Frances Richey's The Warrior appears in The New York Times. It mentions Plath, Robert Lowell, and other writers. Orr's comments on the "emotional truth" of personal poetry and how Plath fits into this style are very astute.

I recently had occasion to be in Chatham and West Harwich on Cape Cod. While there, I took two new photographs in West Harwich of the site of The Belmont Hotel, where Plath briefly waitressed in the Side Hall in the summer of 1952. The hotel is gone, but the name The Belmont lives on as a condominium development. This picture shows the view from the beach towards where the hotel was. This picture shows the beach, which is a private beach. The locals seemed to steer clear of the Belmont beach, and since I don't look good in orange, I opted not to trespass. Both photographs are in the thumbs50-55 page.

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