Sylvia Plath collections: Critical Quarterly Archives, 1958-1989

The John Rylands University Library at the University of Manchester holds the Critical Quarterly archives, 1958-1989. Within this collection are some Sylvia Plath related materials. The Critical Quarterly was an important publisher for Sylvia Plath and she both placed a number of poems with them, and edited their 1961 supplement (No. 2), American Poetry Now.

The reference code for the collection is GB 133 CQA. The full, online catalogue (finding aid) is online here.

Plath related materials can be found in the following series and files:

CQA1: Papers relating to Critical Quarterly writers and contributors
File 106: Plath, Sylvia ([1961]-18 Oct 1976)

Materials include photocopies of typescripts of "Two Campers in Cloud Country" and "On Deck" and 27 poems by various contemporary poets typed by Plath for American Poetry Now, and other materials.

In CQA1, there is also a Ted Hughes file (CQA1/1/65), which also contains references to Sylvia Plath.

CQA5: Papers relating to poetry pamphlets
File 1: "American Poetry Now" (3 May 1961-3 October 1962)

The Critical Quarterly Archives also contain some correspondence with Linda Wagner-Martin around the time she was writing her biography, Sylvia Plath: A Life (1987). Plath is referred to in the Robin Skelton file (CQA1/1/124), William Logan (CQA1/1/83), and David Holbrook (CQA1/1/60). In the small series "Miscellaneous and unpublished proofs" there is a review of Winter Trees by Eileen M. Aird from 1971.

In and after Plath's lifetime, she had more than a dozen publications in the Critical Quarterly (or its poetry supplements). For a list of Plath's periodical publications, see the periodical publications page of my website. A number of the Critical Quarterly covers can be found here.

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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