Exhibit & Lecture: Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar at 50

Ongoing is the 13th Annual Professor John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Library Exhibition, Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Bell Jar. The exhibit closes on 10 March 2013.

Have you yet seen the excellent, illustrated exhibit website?

If you are free next Wednesday, 27 February, come to Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island, to hear Karen V. Kukil, the Associate Curator of Rare Books at Smith College, give the Keynote Address to the exhibit. Karen's talk, "The Bell Jar at 50", is absolutely brilliant and will take place in Global Heritage Hall, Room G01. See you there!

Wait... what? Still need more temptation? Here are some of the featured items:

First edition of The Bell Jar published by Heinemann in England under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas (1963)
First American edition of The Bell Jar published by Harper & Row (1971)
Facsimile of Sylvia Plath's holograph outline for The Bell Jar (1961)
Royal manual typewriter owned by Sylvia Plath, 1950's
Original typescript of "Dirge," annotated by Alfred Young Fisher, [1955]
Original typescript of "Mad Girl’s Love Song", 1959
Correspondence between Sylvia Plath and her publishers.
Articles from the Boston Herald regarding Sylvia Plath's attempted suicide, 1953.
[Study of a Woman], gouache and ink, [cs. 1950-1952]
Reviews from various sources upon the publication of The Bell Jar, 1963.
Death Certificate of Sylvia Plath, certified copy from the General Register Office, Somerset House, London
Correspondence between Aurelia Plath, Sylvia's mother, and Olwyn Hughes, sister of Ted Hughes, regarding the potential publication of The Bell Jar in the United States, 1968.

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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