Sylvia Plath: Did you know...

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, like almost every other book by (or about) Sylvia Plath, has an interesting publishing history. It first appeared in 1977 in England, published by Faber in that shockingly orange dust wrapper. It was re-issued in paperback with additional material from the Sylvia Plath Materials held at Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1979*. On January 2, 1979, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams first appeared in the US, published by Harper & Row.

Did you know that Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams was published in Sweden before it was published in the United States? Noveller och annan prosa was published by Trevi (Stockholm) in 1978. The translations were completed by Margareta Tegnemark.

The Harper and Faber contents still do differ, with the Faber edition including two earlier stories Plath wrote in 1949, "The Green Rock" and "A Day in June".

On the heels of the US publication was the Japanese translation Jonī Panikku to yume no seisho : Shiruvia Purasu tanpenshū.

*The Lilly Library acquired the bulk of their Sylvia Plath Materials in 1977 from Aurelia Schober Plath. See http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/guides/plath/plath2.shtml.

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