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Showing posts from April, 2016

Call for Chapter Proposals: Sylvia Plath in Context

Call for Chapter Proposals Sylvia Plath in Context to be published by Cambridge University Press. Edited by Tracy Brain. Sylvia Plath in Context will be part of Cambridge University Press’s highly regarded Literature in Context series. You can learn more about the series, and link to some of the volumes that have already appeared, from here: http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-general-interest/series/literature-context Each chapter of Sylvia Plath in Context will focus on a key context out of which Plath’s work emerged, rather than being directly about her texts. The series’ descriptor is helpful: Each of these volumes focuses on an individual writer, offering lively, accessible and relatively short essays, by leading scholars, on the many contexts – literary, political, intellectual, social and cultural – that have a bearing on his or her work. Biographical and literary influences on the writer, publishing history and the creati

Post for a Birthday: Sylvia Plath Info Blog is 9

Happy Blogday to me. Happy Blogday to me. Happy Bloday SylviaPlathInfo....Happy Blogday to me. Today, 27 April 2016, the Sylvia Plath Info Blog turns 9. It is exactly 72 years younger than Warren Plath. What a journey this has been. Thank you all for reading, commenting, referring to, etc. Every effort I make on this blog as you in mind so this is as much your blog as it is mine. The archive of all the posts is accessible on the right hand column of the screen. You can also search for words in the search box at the top left-hand corner. Have a look around. Have fun. You can also visit my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is , which is the oldest continually updated website about Sylvia Plath on the internet. There you can read a biography , see photographs of significant Plath related places, book covers , read at bibliographies of publications, archive locations, and the like , and read about Plath's poetry and prose . Self-promotion aside... Thank you all sin

Gail Crowther's The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath

This August, Dr Gail Crowther will see her second book published:  The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath . Following on from her successful Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year's Turning , which is going into a second printing thanks to all you greedy readers, The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath takes an unusual approach to studies on this enigmatic literary figure, focusing on the readers rather than the historical figure herself. Gail carried out primary research by collecting stories and accounts from readers of Plath and she explores key areas such as the first encounter with Plath, ways in which fans feel they 'double' with her, pilgrimages that they make to places where Plath lived and work, how they interact with her images and how they respond to objects owned by Plath. The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath is a unique study, offering a fascinating and original approach not only to Plath scholarship, but to the increasing body of literature on fandom studies. Look for The

Sylvia Plath in Venice

In December 2015, I did some fairly extensive, intensive work with the photographs of Sylvia Plath and Gordon Lameyer from their time together as a couple and as friends. Lameyer took a series of full color images of Plath from circa spring 1953 to April 1956 which are now on slides and printed photographs held by the Lilly. Plath is depicted from Northampton to Ipswich, atop Mount Monadnock to the beaches at Cape Cod, from Newport, Rhode Island to Paris and Venice and Rome. And more. This work included studying the photographs carefully and establishing the date on which they were taken using a variety of sources to support the conclusions I was reaching and include her journals, letters, calendars, and more. Plath and Lameyer traveled from Paris, France to Munich, Germany on Friday 6 April 1956. Then from Munich, Germany, to Venice, Italy on Saturday 7 April 1956. They had just the one full day, Sunday, 8 April 1956, in the enchantingly aquatic city and it seems they made the most

Sylvia Plath: Secret Befouler

Sylvia Plath famously wrote about picking her nose in this 25 January 1953 journal entry: do you realize the illicit sensuous delight I get from picking my nose? I always have, ever since I was a child -- there are so many subtle variations of sensation. A delicate, pointed-nailed fifth finger can catch under dry scabs and flakes of mucous in the nostril and draw them out to be looked at, crumbled between fingers, and flicked to the floor in minute crusts. Or a heavier, determined forefinger can reach up and smear down-and-out the soft, resilient, elastic greenish-yellow smallish blobs of mucous, roll them round and jelly-like between thumb and forefinger, and spread them on the under surface of a desk or chair where they will harden into organic crusts. How many desks and chairs have I thus secretively befouled since childhood? (165) What else was she supposed to do? What with her broken leg and experiencing another Massachusetts winter! On a research trip to Smith College last y