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Sylvia Plath in the Wellesleyan Yearbook

Carl Rollyson (website; Twitter), author of American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath, graciously gave me original copies of The Wellesleyan for 1949 and 1950. The Wellesleyan was the yearbook of Gamaliel Bradford High School, from where Sylvia Plath graduated in June 1950. Included with the yearbooks was a small cache of articles about Sylvia Plath publications spanning nearly half a century:

Heller, Zoë. "Ariel's Appetite." The New Republic 223. December 18, 2000: 30-33.

Howard, Maureen, "The Girl Who Tried to be Good." The New York Times Book Review. December 14, 1975: 1-2.

Jefferson, Margo. "Who Was Sylvia?" Newsweek. December 22, 1975: 83.

"The Blood Jet is Poetry." Time 87. June 10, 1966: 118-120.

While the articles are fascinating, the yearbooks are the focus of this blog post. I have gone through them carefully and have scanned all of Plath's appearances that I found, plus one instance where Plath might be in a photograph but it is a general photo: not of a classroom or an extracurricular group shot. In the 1950 yearbook, Plath has an artwork reproduced. I have not included that in this post as it is under her copyright still. However, it was reproduced under the title "Kids fixing car" on page 24 in Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual (Google Book). In the 1950 yearbook, this drawing appeared on page 78.

Normally I do not post images on this blog for which I have not obtained permission or where copyright is a concern. Granted that these school photographs belong to someone, I have not been able to track them down and operate under the premise that this usage is educational, not for profit, and fair use.

1948-1949 yearbook






1949-1950 yearbook









All links accessed 1 December 2013.
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Comments

  1. Julia Gordon-Bramer07 January, 2014 11:52

    How wonderful! She looks so pretty, and her signature did not change at all, did it? Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carl Rollyson08 January, 2014 08:07

    Peter, I'm glad I gave you this material to share with others. I'm pleased to see it here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous08 January, 2014 15:17

    Love it! Thanks for sharing. / Mr Flur

    ReplyDelete

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