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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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Comments

  1. Anonymous01 January, 2011 12:24

    Happy New Year, Peter!

    Good to start the new year with news that a new Plath bio in the works! Hopefully the Hughes archive at the BL and his conversations with David Wevill will provide some new ground. Has anyone here read Rollyson's other biographies (Lillian Hellman, Susan Sontag, Rebecca West)?
    ~VC

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  2. panther01 January, 2011 12:26

    I like Rollyson's fresh approach.How exciting that he's had access to previously-unread materials !

    He seems to be wanting to place SP in the bigger picture, to get away from the exhausting (and ultimately pointless ?) picking-over of the SP/TH/AW triangle. High time !

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  3. Peter K Steinberg02 January, 2011 08:53

    ~VC, thanks! Happy New Year to you too! I've never read Rollyson's other books.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kris Underwood03 January, 2011 17:09

    Hm...the new biography looks like it could be great.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jess14 January, 2011 22:12

    When I want to bring my Plath research back to life, this is one of the first places I stop:). Hope all is well with you and that the new year brings good fortune. Jess McCort

    ReplyDelete
  6. Carl Rollyson13 March, 2011 11:10

    It is wonderful to get these responses to my biography of Sylvia Plath. I've begun interviewing those who knew her. In the meantime, let me tell you about my column, Biographology, that appears in BiblioBuffet.com. I write about biographies and the reviewing of biographies. My next column, which will appear in about two weeks, will be about my decision to do a Plath biography. Thanks again for the encouraging words.

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