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Representing Sylvia Plath Published

Cambridge University Press has published Representing Sylvia Plath, edited by Tracy Brain and Sally Bayley. The book is now available in the UK and will be available in the USA in September, though you may be able to order from CUP now...

To order the book through Cambridge University Press, click here. The retail price is £50.00, which is substantial but I suspect work every penny or pence. Other metadata include:
  • ISBN: 9781107006751
  • Publication date: August 2011
  • 264 pages
  • 22 b/w illus.
  • Dimensions: 228 x 152 mm
  • Weight: 0.56 kg
The books contents include:
Introduction: 'Purdah' and the enigma of representation by Sally Bayley and Tracy Brain

Part I. Contexts:
1. 'Mailed into space': on Sylvia Plath's letters by Jonathan Ellis
2. 'The photographic chamber of the eye': Plath photography, and the post-confessional muse by Anita Helle
3. 'O the tangles of that old bed': fantasies of incest and the 'Daddy' narrative in Ariel by Lynda K. Bundtzen
4. Plath and torture: cultural contexts for Plath's imagery of the Holocaust by Steven Gould Axelrod

Part II. Poetics and Composition:
5. 'The trees of the mind are black, the light is blue': sublime encounters in Sylvia Plath's tree poems by Sally Bayley
6. Coming to terms with colour: Plath's visual aesthetic by Laure de Nervaux-Gavoty
7. Madonna (of the refrigerator): mapping Sylvia Plath's double in 'The Babysitters' drafts by Kathleen Connors
8. 'Procrustean identity': Sylvia Plath's women's magazine fiction by Luke Ferretter

Part III. Representation:
9. Confession, contrition, and concealment: evoking Plath in Ted Hughes's 'Howls and Whispers' by Lynda K. Bundtzen
10. Fictionalising Sylvia Plath by Tracy Brain
11. Primary representations: three artists respond to Sylvia Plath
Adolescent Plath – 'the girl who would be God' Suzie Hanna
Bodily imprints: a choreographic response to Sylvia Plath's Poppy Poems Kate Flatt (with Sally Bayley)
Stella Vine's peanut crunching Plath Sally Bayley

Looks good! 
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Comments

  1. Melanie Smith21 August, 2011 21:19

    Hurrah!

    Hopefully mine arrives this week.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous22 August, 2011 06:26

    Melanie, I agree with you. I'm anxious for my copy too, (go book depository!) This may be a book whose dust wrapper I do not keep. I might just make my own, like we did in high school or something, out of a a brown paper grocery bag. I'm sure the contents of the book are not as representative as the cover...

    =Travis

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kristina Zimbakova22 August, 2011 08:27

    As for the artistic value of the cover image, my stance corresponds to the one by Travis...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous23 August, 2011 09:10

    Agreed! Using this as a cover is insulting to Plath and her work.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Melanie Smith26 August, 2011 08:24

    It is here! Hurrah!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Peter K Steinberg26 August, 2011 08:26

    That's great Melanie. It seems people are mixed (not really) about the cover. Are you keeping the cover?! Does it look any better in person?

    I'm anxious for my copy to arrive though many of the essays seem still kind of fresh in mind from when they were presented at Oxford...
    pks

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous30 August, 2011 11:23

    The comments on the cover are interesting. Given that the book's title is Representing Sylvia Plath, I would think that putting such an image on the cover is not necessarily to endorse it. Any Plath representation, whether visual, literary or otherwise, will necessarily elicit divided opinions. To open up debate about this must be one of the book's central purposes. Love it or loathe it, I agree that the Vine painting is not something you can easily avert your eyes from, should you retain the cover.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous09 October, 2011 14:21

    The book is on sale at a good price through Barnes and Noble.

    ReplyDelete

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