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Links, reviews, etc. - Week ending 6 December 2008

  • Amazon.com began listing Sylvia Plath's Fiction: A Critical Study by Luke Ferretter (University of Edinburgh Press). Amazon.com lists the publication date to be on May 15, 2009. Edinburgh University Press lists publication date to be July 2009. Regardless, look for it. Based on what I know of Ferretter's work, and what I've read & heard, I think it is safe for me to give advanced, unseen praise for this book.

    The product description on Amazon.com reads:

    Sylvia Plath's poetry has generated tons of critical interest, yet there remains no full-length study of her fiction. In addition to her classic novel The Bell Jar, Plath wrote dozens of short stories, only about half of which have been published. Luke Ferretter launches the first comprehensive study of Plath as a writer of fiction. He encompasses both published and unpublished material, tracing Plath's influences, style, politics, and place in the history of postmodern fiction. Plath was very much concerned with gender ideologies of the 1950s, and Ferretter reads Plath's work against this cultural context. Building on recent studies of her multigeneric work, Ferretter defines a clear and comprehensive place for Plath's fiction in her richly complex body of work.

    Key features:
    • First full-length study of Plath's fiction
    • Comprehensive discussion of Plath's unpublished short fiction
    • Extensive discussion of Plath's short fiction as a whole.

    This is a very worthy and welcome subject, and Ferretter's book will undoubtedly bring much needed and wider recognition to Plath's fiction.


  • Ebay and Bloomsbury will have a live auction on 11 December for a first edition The Colossus by Sylvia Plath (Heinemann, 1960). Quite a rare book, and typically expensive, it might be possible to snatch this up at a bargain.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous06 December, 2008 08:28

    Ferretter's book sounds very, very interesting. Looking forward to this long overdue study of Plath's prose - sounds very encouraging.

    P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous07 December, 2008 17:59

    Dear Peter,

    It's wonderful to see you still promoting Plath--your blog is quite impressive in its scope, and is a much-needed resource in the Plath universe.

    I'm not sure if you remember me from the Plath forum, but I did comment there from time to time. I've been corresponding with Lisa Flowers about the possibility of starting a new forum, and was curious to know if you'd had any thoughts along those lines? I miss it regularly, and feel like it's still a needed space in the internet universe for Plathians to dialogue with one another. It would be great to see it possibly link to this blog. In any case, these are just speculations, but email me and let me know your thoughts: kate_durbin@yahoo.com.

    Cheers,
    Kate Durbin

    ReplyDelete

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