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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.

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