Additional Articles on Sylvia Plath's Disappearance

Those familiar with this blog know that Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt is a topic I have covered in years past. Not just in blog posts, but at length in my article "'They Had to Call and Call': The Search for Sylvia Plath", published in 2010. Since that time, many new articles have been located. In fact, the bibliography of articles that appeared in that paper had the number of found articles at 172. As of today, including recently found articles listed below, there are 196. This increase of 24 articles shows that the search for Sylvia Plath continues.

So far this year, I have found four new (to me) articles. Two articles each from the Detroit News and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. For those not up on the lingo of our suthun' Cajun-Creole-French brothers and sisters, a picayune is actually not a great thing at all. Of its uses, it can mean "petty; worthless" (as a adjective) and "a small coin of little value, especially a 5-cent piece" (as a noun).

"Long Hike." Detroit News. August 26, 1953: 46.
"Missing College Girl Found Under Porch." Detroit News. August 27, 1953: 11.
"Woods Scoured for Missing Girl." The Times-Picayune. August 26, 1953: 5.
"Missing College Girl is Located". The Times-Picayune. August 27, 1953: 10.

One might spend time revisiting previous posts on this blog using the tag "First Suicide Attempt"; but that might be cumbersome. In order to present the current full list of articles I have compiled, I have therefore added a page to my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is. On the Bibliography page, click "Articles on First Suicide Attempt" to access the list (or click here directly). It is a work in progress, as any bibliography is, and will therefore updated whenever new articles are located or better information (if applicable) is made known to me.

If you live in a town or city that has newspapers on microfilm, please consider going and looking at newspapers for articles from 24-28 August 1953. Maybe we can all grow this list to make it a little longer and more comprehensive. Whether or not you find anything, please email me (see contact page) and let me know what you have checked. And many thanks in advance if you do.

All links accessed 7 February and 31 July 2015.

You can see a bibliography of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt, and read PDF's of them, over at A celebration, this is.

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'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...

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...

Search This Blog