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Switching On

Dusting off the keyboard, oiling the finger joints, etc. Creaking back to life.

One of my few resolutions is to finish adding the books Plath read/owned to her library on LibraryThing. Like a bibliography it is never going to be complete for there are undoubtedly unmentioned books that she read. This morning I added about twenty titles, mostly from late 1956 and early 1957 from her time at Newnham College in Cambridge. These are all titles that she listed in Works Cited or Bibliographies for papers; or titles that she marked on reading lists or syllabi. Of the 25 pages of notes I took on Plath's courses and papers and reading lists, etc. there is about a page and a half remaining to be added...

In December, shortly after my last post, I found out that a writer called Carl Rollyson is at work on a new biography of Sylvia Plath provisionally titled American Isis: The Life and Death of Sylvia Plath and expected to be published in February 2013. You can read about it here.
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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...
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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...
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