Sylvia Plath's Passport: Part Three

This is the third post on Plath's passport. Read the first one here and the second posting here.

Sylvia Plath received a new passport issued by the Department of State Passport Agency in Boston in 1959. The date of issue was 8 September 1959. This passport is held by Emory University in the subseries of Plath papers in the larger Hughes papers (collection number 644). Plath's occupation on the document is "Writer".

There are far fewer stamps in this passport than in her first one, which I posted about on 22 March 2014.

14 December 1959: Arrival stamp: Southampton, England
28 June 1961: Departure stamp: Dover, England
28 June 1961: Arrival stamp: Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
14 July 1961: Departure stamp: Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
14 July 1961: Arrival stamp: Dover

That's it! No stamps for either her July 1962 trip to Wales or her September 1962 trip to Ireland. Domestic responsibilities including the care of her baby/babies precluded other trips, such as their intention to spend three months abroad on the Maugham Award that Ted Hughes won. In fact, the 17-day trip to France was largely made possible as Plath's mother was in England at the time, taking care of their 15-month-old daughter Frieda.

Plath renewed her passport on 11 October 1961 at the Consulate of the United States in Southampton, England. This was done just over a month after she and Hughes moved from London to North Tawton; in-between writing "Finisterre" and "The Surgeon at 2 a.m." on 29 September and "Last Words" on 21 October. The renewal was good for four years.

The journey from North Tawton to Southampton, by car, according to Google Maps is roughly 3 hours and back in 1961, it might have taken a good while longer. No matter though it would have been a full days' effort to get there and back. Plath wrote letters to her month on 6 October and 13 October, but made no mention of this excursion in either. It is possible that she mailed her passport, too, rather than driving to have it renewed.

The last dated stamp in the passport is 1 March 1963 when Sylvia Plath's passport was canceled/annulled at the American Embassy in London following her death. Someone at the consulate wrote "HOLDER DIED IN LONDON ENGLAND FEB. 11. 1963."

If you benefited from this post or any content on the Sylvia Plath Info Blog, my website for Sylvia Plath (A celebration, this is), and @sylviaplathinfo on Twitter, then please consider sending me a tip via PayPal. Thank you for at least considering! All funds will be put towards my Sylvia Plath research.

All links accessed 16 February 2013 (!), 18 March and 2 April 2014.

Comments

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...

Some final photographs of Sylvia Plath

Susan O'Neill-Roe took a series of photographs of Sylvia Plath and her children from October to late November (or maybe early December) 1962 while she was a day nanny/mother's help at Court Green. From nearby Belstone , it was a short drive to North Tawton and the aid she provided enabled Plath to complete the masterful October and November poems and also to make day or overnight trips to London for poetry business and other business. Some of O'Neill-Roe's photographs are well-known. However, a cache of photographs formed a part of the papers of failed biographer Harriet Rosenstein. They were sold separately from the rest of her papers that went to Emory. I was fortunate enough to see low resolution scans of them a while back so please note these are being posted today as mere reference quality images. There are two series here. The first of the children with Plath dressed in red and black. (This should be referred to in the future, please, as Plath's Stendhal-c...

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...

Search This Blog