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When Sylvia Plath Rocked Cleveland

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer was available through a database but I did not find an article there. Two other papers, the Cleveland News and the Cleveland Press were available on microfilm only so I spent an hour or so looking through the papers this way. Happily! I found one article in each paper, which adds to the list of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt/disappearance.

"Smith College Student Missing." Cleveland News. August 26, 1953: 1.
"Hunt Top Student." Cleveland Press. August 26, 1953: 12.

These two articles bring the total up to 198 articles found.

Before Cleveland, in Cincinnati which is a city with even less to do (especially during the rain delay of the Chicago Cubs versus the Cincinnati Reds baseball game), it did not occur to me to look through their microfilm in their public library (which has a beautiful book sculpture on Vine Street). We were so bored one day by 8 a.m. that I asked my wife if we could pop over to the Lilly Library for the day but she said no.

I requested the Cincinnati newspaper via Interlibrary Loan so perhaps the city might have covered it and will redeem itself, somehow. That's disingenuous and maybe unfair as the food was fine at Taste of Belgium and Melt Eclectic. The other city we hit, Pittsburgh, was amazing on all fronts: feel/vibe, food, ballpark and quality of baseball.

Later . . . not like you can tell . . . But after a couple of weeks the Boston Public Library received the Cincinnati Enquirer for me on microfilm via Interlibrary loan and the Queen City only marginally redeemed itself by yielding an addition article on Plath's first suicide attempt, bringing our total to 199.

"Missing Student Found." Cincinnati Enquirer. August 27, 1953: 11.



All links accessed 6 October 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.
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Comments

  1. Anonymous23 February, 2016 14:55

    I've enjoyed your blog and I find it very informative. However, I think that your assessment of Cincinnati is very unfair. This post makes me think that you're a pretentious jerk.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peter K Steinberg23 February, 2016 18:42

    Hi Anonymous,

    I'm sorry that you found my impressions of Cincinnati disparaging and disappointing. While I may be a pretentious jerk, perhaps I should just stick to Sylvia Plath and not travel writing?

    I do hope that you do not lose hope in the blog as a result of this. I would look forward to more comments from you on Plath-related matters.

    With kind regards,
    ~pks

    ReplyDelete

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