Hello, just a brief update to remind people in England about Tim Kendall's public lecture on "Sylvia Plath in Devon" next week on 1 June. Read more about it in the original post from a few weeks back . If anyone who reads this blog attends, I am sure we would all love an review/synopsis.

Sylvia Plath graduated Smith College with honors in June 1955. She had spent her senior year working on a special honors thesis which she titled: "The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevsky's Novels." Her originally submitted typescript is held by the Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College (a microfilm copy also exists). Additionally, a typescript carbon of the work, as well as her notes and note cards, are held in the "Smith College Memorabilia" (Box 11) of Plath mss. II at the Lilly Library, Indiana University ( a list of Plath's archival collections, with links, can be found here ). Plath's thesis is one of those documents that garners continual interest. And, in 1989 it was published in a limited edition by the Embers Handpress in Wales, UK. Currently there are no copies available through book sites such as ABEbooks.com , thus proving it is a highly collectible book. There are 25 copies held in libraries around the world per Wo...

Sylvia Plath was mightily stoked that she got to live in the flat that formerly served as home to a young W. B. Yeats. But, did you know that another house that Plath "occupied" had a writerly association, as well. That was the house she borrowed in the spring and early summer of 1961 while she was writing The Bell Jar . Please see what I'm talking about and stop by Tracie Bylo Hitching's " Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: The World of Byron Today. " And many thanks to Tracie for making this association know to us!

First, some kind of non-Plath business... I received the following in an email from the London Rare Book School. As I do go on about books and manuscripts & archives and special collections from time to time, this may be of interest to some of this blogs' readers. London Rare Books School will be running in two sessions from 27 June – 8 July, 2011. LRBS still has spaces available for some of its courses, notably 'Modern Literary Manuscripts', 'Reading, Writing & Sending Texts: 1400-1919' & 'Children’s Books: 1470-1980. For more details, see the LRBS website . And, just to make this post kind of about Sylvia Plath, I recently found the following book reviews and poem that have been published... Darling, Kristina Marie. Review of Lisa Narbeshuber's Confessing Cultures: Politics and the Self in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath . Rocky Mountain Review . Fall 2010: 242-244. Hoagwood, T. Review of Luke Ferretter’s Sylvia Plath’s Fiction: A Critical ...

Tim Kendall , author of Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study , will be giving a talk on “Plath in Devon” at 5pm on 1 June in Lecture Theatre 1 of the Queen's Building, University of Exeter, Streatham Campus. Advanced booking is essential. To reserve your seat email N.R.Glanville@exeter.ac.uk or telephone 01392 725879.

Thanks to Anonymous for being the only one to respond to the trivia questions. This was my second attempt at this (See the trivia 16 June 2008 and the answers on 29 June 2008 ) and both were relatively poorly received. Ho hum; seems like the “Did you know...” is a better way to go. The answers are: 1. In the fall of 1954, during the first semester of her senior year at Smith College, which charitable activity did Sylvia Plath do? D. Read aloud to a dear old blind man. 2. To whom did she write of this activity? B. Gordon Lameyer In a letter simply dated "Saturday" Plath asked id he mentioned this activity to him. She reported that she read aloud to the dear old blind man on Monday's. 3. How much money did Sylvia Plath lose playing roulette in Monte Carlo during her winter break from Cambridge in December 1955/January 1956? C. $3 In a letter from January 21, 1956 to Gordon Lameyer, Plath recounts her continental excursions, admitting to the loss of funds...