Sylvia Plath Archive and the Lilly Library

The Lilly Library at IU Bloomington

The Lilly Library is a great place to conduct research. Many Sylvia Plath scholars will descend upon the library's reading room over the next two weeks. For some, it will be their first time working with Plath's manuscripts, for others it will be a long-overdue return to a great place. I have had the pleasure of conducting Plathian research in more than a dozen repositories and although they are all libraries: they each have different policies and procedures for handling the materials. The Lilly Library is a lot like Fort Knox: they are strict. But they have to be.

Here is a list of some of the things I have learned in my five previous trips to the archive at Indiana University (as well as a few generally applicable things to keep in mind when working in libraries):

1. You'll only be allowed to work with one folder in one box at a time.
2. Ensure that the folder and all the papers with the folder remain fully on the desk at all times. Do not let anything hang over the edge. You will be reprimanded.
3. Keep the papers in the folders that you work with in the order in which you find them. If something's not right, consult with someone on staff.
4. Because of the "Transitions" exhibit in the Lilly Library, something like 70 items will not be available for scruntiny in the reading room. You'll have to visit the exhibition space to see them. These include some of her diaries, books from her personal library and poetry drafts, as well as items such as her extravagant childhood paper dolls, suitcase and unpublished letters from husband Ted Hughes.
5. Photography of materials is limited. Some libraries allow for rampant, free photography of their collections; however, each library is, as I have said, different. Consult with a librarian/archivist to determine what can and cannot be photographed.
6. Transcribe until your fingers blister.
7. It might be chilly in there so bring a sweater. Remember: archives are not about human comfort. They are about making the paper and other holdings last.

Of course, I'm certain there are more things to keep in mind, but these are what I can think of right now!

If you are going to be conducting research before or after the Symposium, I hope you enjoy yourself. If you do not have a blog or some other outlet in which to talk about the experience, please consider this blog as a welcome space to write about your time. I'd love to have guest posts and am sure the blogs readers would love to read your impressions. I think the most important thing to remember is that it is a privilege to work with Plath's papers (or really, any collection within an archive). Enjoy the archive. Respect it. I hope that at any given moment I am not working with something that another researcher is keen to have access to. If you think I might be, just let me know and I'll request something else.

As for my own research plans, in the past I have blogged nightly about my experiences in the archive. See the posts from my January 2012 trip to Smith College and from my January 2010 trip to the Lilly Library. I hope I don't repeat myself in my forthcoming updates (next week!), but I do find that by re-examining certainly materials, new information can be learned because of shifting perspectives. I have a couple of things I need to look at from Plath mss (the materials they bought during Plath's lifetime!) for one of my papers; but the most effort will likely be spent in Plath mss II, which is undoubtedly the largest focus for many people.

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...

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...

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last...

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