Links, reviews, etc. - Week ending 29 January 2009

Later on this year (26 May), look for Anna Jackson's Diary Poetics: Form and Style in Writers' Diaries, 1915-1962. New York: Routledge, 2010. I mention this, as there is a chapter on Plath, as one might expect. It is in the series Routledge studies in twentieth-century literature. ISBN is 9780415998314.

Also, later this year (31 May), see Neil Corcoran's Shakespeare and the Modern Poet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. I mention this, as there is a chapter on Plath, as one might expect, "Survivor of Cease: Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath in Ted Hughes's Poems."

Luke Ferretter and Nephie Christodoulides have published articles in Woolf Editing/Editing Woolf: Selected Papers from the Eighteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf: University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, 19-22 June, 2008. Clemson, SC: Clemson University Digital Press, 2009, edited by Eleanor McNees and Sara Veglahn. See Nephie's essay "On Not Being Able to Paint: Writing Inhibitions and Self-Editing in Virginia Woolf's and Sylvia Plath's Fiction" and see Luke's essay "'The Influence of Somebody upon Something': To the Lighthouse in Sylvia Plath's Work." You can order a copy for $22.95. I'm not sure if there are any other papers dealing with Plath in this publication, but will report back once I receive my copy.

I also found, recently, an article by Steven Gould Axelrod in the book Alienation, which is in Bloom's Literary Criticism series. See pages 11-20 to read "Alienation and Renewal in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar."

John Barber from the Globe and Mail published "Fine Writers, Lousy Spouses" on Wednesday.

Please note that ladylazarus.tv has been updated with a slideshow and movie.

It certainly seems as though there is, suddenly, a lot to look forward to this year!

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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