Sylvia Plath collections: Yaddo Records

Sylvia Plath collections: Yaddo Records - Update

I recently obtained the details of the Sylvia Plath related files held in the Yaddo Records (New York Public Library). I wrote about this first in April, click here to see that posting. To recap, Plath and Hughes stayed at Yaddo from September - December 1959. It is here that Plath wrote many of the poems that completed her first volume of poetry, The Colossus. Yaddo is located in lovely Saratoga Springs, New York - 199 miles from Boston, 194 miles from New York City, New York, and 4,258 miles from North Pole, Alaska. The New York Public Library obtained these records in 1999.

The main correspondents in the file are Sylvia Plath (and Ted Hughes) and Elizabeth Ames, the Executive Director of Yaddo, though there are others. All material dates from 1959. Below is a list of letters.

1. Elizabeth Ames to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, typed, undated, 1 p.
2. Sylvia Plath to Elizabeth Ames, typed, 11 February 1959, 1 p.
3. Elizabeth Ames to Sylvia Plath, typed, 13 February 1959, 1 p.
4. Sylvia Plath to Elizabeth Ames, typed, 22 February 1959, 1 p.
5. Elizabeth Ames to Philip Booth, typed, 25 Feburary 1959, 1 p.
6. Elizabeth Ames to John Sweeney, typed, 25 Feburary 1959, 1p.
7. Philip Booth to Elizabeth Ames, typed, 28 Feburary 1959, 2 p.
8. John Sweeney to Elizabeth Ames, handwritten, 6 March 1959, 2 p.
9. Elizabeth Ames to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, typed, 3 April 1959, 1 p.
10. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes to Elizabeth Ames, typed, 8 April 1959, 1 p.
11. Elizabeth Ames to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, typed, 12 August 1959, 1 p.
12. Sylvia Plath to Elizabeth Ames, typed, 24 August 1959, 1 p.
13. Sylvia Plath to Elizabeth Ames, typed, 5 September 1959, 1 p.
14. Elizabeth Ames to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, typed, typed, 16 September 1959, 1 p.

In addition to the correspondence are miscellaneous items, all worth a mention. They hold two copies of Plath's application, which stretches to three pages and includes:

I. Name and address
II. Brief biographical note
III. Plans for work done at Yaddo
IV. Fellowships and awards
V. References (John Sweeney and Philip Booth)
VI. Preferred dates to visit Yaddo

They also have typed "file" notes by anonymously acronymed people - R. E., J. C. , and M. D. Z. R. E. I think is Richard Eberhardt. J. C. may be John Cheever. M. D. Z. I think is Morton Dauwen Zabel. At any rate, M. D. Z.'s comments on Plath are particularly interesting.

The New York Public Library is online here. The section of the library you'll want to contact is the Manuscript & Archives division. The finding aid to the Yaddo Records is online here. The Plath materials are in Box 276 (page 79 of the finding aid). To contact the archives, email mssref at nypl dot org.

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...

Some final photographs of Sylvia Plath

Susan O'Neill-Roe took a series of photographs of Sylvia Plath and her children from October to late November (or maybe early December) 1962 while she was a day nanny/mother's help at Court Green. From nearby Belstone , it was a short drive to North Tawton and the aid she provided enabled Plath to complete the masterful October and November poems and also to make day or overnight trips to London for poetry business and other business. Some of O'Neill-Roe's photographs are well-known. However, a cache of photographs formed a part of the papers of failed biographer Harriet Rosenstein. They were sold separately from the rest of her papers that went to Emory. I was fortunate enough to see low resolution scans of them a while back so please note these are being posted today as mere reference quality images. There are two series here. The first of the children with Plath dressed in red and black. (This should be referred to in the future, please, as Plath's Stendhal-c...

Amy C. Rea Reviews Heather Clark's Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

Here’s a thing about me: I’m a voracious reader, but very rarely have a physically based emotional response to something I’m reading. I don’t laugh out loud, I don’t cry, both of which I do when watching movies. It’s not that I don’t find things funny or sad when I read, but apparently I need more of a visual cue. So it’s telling that when I got to the end of Dr. Heather Clark’s new biography of Sylvia Plath, Red Comet , I cried. It’s not as if I didn’t know how the story ended. But the level of detail and analysis Clark brings to her study of Plath is so detailed, and her examination of those brutal last weeks so deeply explored, that it broke my heart. Clark has done some tremendously important and much-needed work with this biography. It would be remiss of me not to note the aid she received from Peter K. Steinberg and the work he did compiling Plath’s Letters . Clark clearly spent a great deal of time studying these source materials, as well as others that were not available ...

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