Chevreau and The Rabbit Catcher

In November 2008, I posted about the collection of Sylvia Plath typescripts (link to library's finding aid) held at the Sydney Jones Library at the University of Liverpool. The typescript for "The Rabbit Catcher" is particularly interesting as written adjacent to the first line - in Plath's hand - is the world Chevreau.

Recently I learned that this is likely not referring to a young goat. Rather, it is referring to a person, Cecile Chevreau. I wonder if she kept young goats?

Cecile Chevreau, along with Gary Watson and Alan Wheatley, read poems for the BBC Third Programme 'New Poems' broadcast on 16 September 1962 (at 18.40, or 6:40 p.m.). Other poets included in the broadcast were Zulfikar Ghose (a reviewer Plath's The Colossus), John Lehmann (an editor at London Magazine), Christopher Hampton, Jenny Joseph, John Knight, Michell Raper, Anthony Thwaite (amongst other things, a producer for BBC radio), and Terence Tiller. The poems by Plath included in this program were "The Moon and the Yew Tree" and "The Rabbit Catcher".

You can read more about Plath, archives, her recordings and the BBC in "These Ghostly Archives", a paper co-written by Gail Crowther and myself to be published in Plath Profiles 2 later this month August. Oh, and if you're interested, you can see a detail of the cover art by Kristina Zimbakova here. But, that's all you're getting until the issue is ready in a week or so...

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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