The cover image (pictured left) features a single paper doll outfit by Sylvia Plath from circa 1945-1946. Inside the book are three gorgeous full-page illustrations of Plath's paper dolls from the Sylvia Plath mss. II collection at the Lilly Library, Indiana University at Bloomington, as well as a roughly two page review of the Plath component to the exhibit.
Curated and written by Anne Koval, the Plath piece is really well done; I cannot profess to possess any knowledge of paper dolls, so will spare everyone reading this any further critique. I like that Koval quotes from Plath's poem "Tulips" in regard to its reference to a paper doll: "And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow." In some ways it reminds us that Plath, at age 28 when the poem was written, was not too far removed from the girl who made and played with paper dolls. (Koval appears to have missed that just over a year after writing "Tulips," that Plath began her poem "Crossing the Water" this way: "Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people." Plath alludes to papery people also in her poems "Widow" and "The Applicant", among others.) And, it is wonderful that Koval makes connections between one of the paper doll designs Plath called "The Fairy Scarf" to a poem by the same name she composed in 1945. In addition to a copy of "The Fairy Scarf" that is held by the Lilly Library (Plath mss. II, Box 8, Folder 6), a fair, illustrated manuscript copy is held by The Morgan Library.
Koval points out that Plath named her outfits with "romantic titles such as "Heartaches," "Fireside reveries," or "Easter suit" (14). But here was a missed inter-textual connection, for Plath wrote a poem called "Fireside Reveries" which was published in her junior high school newspaper, The Phillipian, in February 1947 ("Fireside Reveries" is not listed in Plath's Collected Poems). So it is quite contemporary to the eponymous paper doll outfit. The speaker in the poem, written in an irregular but rhyming meter, sits dreaming in front of a fire with "A book of poems in my lap" (Phillipian 7). She describes the way the flames leap from the logs in language and imagery that also call to mind the much later poems "Lady Lazarus" and "Fever 103°."
I should think that any Plath reader, scholar, or enthusiast will likely enjoy this tall, slim volume as a rich component and addition to their collection. In my own experience with the Lilly Library, I can say that their digitization is top-notch. The digital surrogates of Plath's paper dolls in the catalog are amazing and crisp and take on a life of their own.