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Sylvia Plath: Did you know...


In Letters Home, Plath wrote to her mother on October 12, 1962, that "I am a famous here--mentioned this week in The Listener as one of the half-dozen women who will last--including Marianne Moore and the Brontës!."

Did you know that the article to which she refers was by fellow poet Elizabeth Jennings. It was in Jennings review of Mrs. Browning by Alethea Hatyer? The article appeared in the September 13, 1962 issue of The Listener, on page 400. The paragraph in which Plath's name is mentioned reads, "Mrs Browning labours under the burden which all women poets have to carry - the fact of being a woman. Memorable English or American poets can be numbered on less than two hands; one thinks of Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Edith Sitwell's early work, Anne Ridler, Kathkeen Raine, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and scarcely anyone else..."

It must have tickled Plath, particularly, to be mentioned in the same breath as Marianne Moore who snubbed Plath on a number of occasions, most recently to that date by refusing to recommend the Knopf edition of The Colossus, published earlier that year. To read a bit more on Plath's relationship with Moore, please read Vivian R. Pollak's "Moore, Plath, Hughes, and 'The Literary Life'" in American Literary History 17:1. Spring 2005: 95-117. For the bit about Moore on The Colossus see page 109 in the essay.

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