Sylvia Plath Collections: Eric Walter White Second Accrual

McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada holds more of Eric Walter White's papers (in addition to the papers held at the University of Texas at Austin). There are four different accruals of his papers collected throughout the years. There are Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes letters in the second accrual, purchased from the bookseller Bertram Rota in 1990.

The finding aid to the collection lists the Plath materials under those materials pertaining to Hughes:

Hughes, Ted
From:1 ALs, 2 TLs
To: 3 TL(car.) 1957-1966. Sylvia Plath has added a postscript note to the ALS from Ted Hughes.
Also one TL (car.) addressed to Mrs. Ted Hughes. Photocopy of a typed biographical sketch by Ted Hughes.

The correspondence goes from 1957-1966. In one letter from Hughes to White, Plath has added three words in pen to the typed letter. The letter was arguably, in my opinion, typed by Plath. Additionally, Plath added a handwritten postscript to a letter that I roughly date to Monday 3 September 1962. As stated in "These Ghostly Archives 5: Reanimating the Past" this may be the first known example of Plath and Hughes sharing letter-space after the discovery of his affair with Assia Wevill in July of that year. The letter is quite revealing too in that we learn of a new artistic inspiration to Plath: Sidney Nolan. White sent Plath and Hughes some of Nolan's prints and Plath writes that they she was taken in by them.

Nolan had a Retrospective exhibition at the Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1961. It is possible the prints were sent from the book that came out of the exhibit. Additionally, Thames and Hudson published Sidney Nolan by Kenneth Clark and Colin MacInnes in 1961, too.

You can see more libraries and archives that hold Sylvia Plath archival materials here.

All links accessed on 1 June 2013.

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

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 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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