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!
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...