On Wednesday, 20 July, it was announced that Kirsten Dunst is set to make her directorial debut with a new adaptation of Sylvia Plath's only finished novel, The Bell Jar , starring Dakota Fanning in the lead role as Esther Greenwood. Since then, the news has gone viral which is not surprising in the least. In 2007, word spread that a film was in the works headlined by Julia Stiles and Tristine Skyler (screenplay), but unfortunately this project did not come to fruition. In fact, a blog post about the project was the second post ever here on the Sylvia Plath Info Blog. In May 2008, I posted a letter from Julia Stiles  herself on this blog about the project. We can and should lament that the Stiles/Skyler project never happened. I witnessed them conducting research at Smith College and provided information and resources when asked. So I know first-hand the lengths to which they went in creating a screenplay that would honor Plath herself and the work she did in writing The Bell ...

In Sylvia Plath's senior year at Bradford Senior High, 1949-1950, she was co-editor with Frank Irish of The Bradford . As with the previous posts covering Plath's first   and second  years at high school (posted on 1 July and 7 July, respectively), below is a list of those newspapers which were published during Plath's final year at high school. Here I describe the known contributions Plath made to The Bradford from the fall of 1949 to spring of 1950, as well as the instances where she was mentioned. The list of contributors for each issue appeared on page 2. If Plath's name appeared, I have listed the department and/or role. There are instances where Plath's name was not listed, which we can take to mean she contributed no content or was accidentally left off (though that seems doubtful). The departments typically were Features, News, Business, Sports, Typing, and Art. Each newspaper, excepting April 1949, was a four pages in broadsheet format. Each newspaper ...

This is the second post on Sylvia Plath's participation with and contributions to The Bradford . (Read the first was post .) This post looks at Plath's junior year of high school, 1948-1949. But first, a side-story. One of the first things I found when working with the archive was that Plath was the subject of a feature article on 20 December 1977. Kathleen Offenhartz's "Bradford Remembers: Sylvia Plath" is a measured piece with some revealing information. The article appears on pages 1 and 3. Upon reading page three, among several other things ye olde Archive Fever 103° took hold as re-printed there from an earlier issue of The Bradford was Plath's poem "Fog". Like me you might be saying, "But in none of the bibliographies of Plath's work is there an entry in the 1940s for a poem entitled 'Fog'." Well now: clearly we were mistaken. This 1977 find sent me hurtling back to the 1940s. I quickly found all 18 issues for the...

On a day in March, I visited Wellesley High School to look through old copies of the school newspaper, The Bradford . Sylvia Plath attended the school under its former name: Gamaliel Bradford Senior High. Also in its former location as the old school was razed a few years back. As a last minute decision, according to her diary, Plath decided to try out for The Bradford and was accepted to join the staff of the school newspaper. For the next three years, Plath was a contributor in many ways to the school paper, ultimately becoming its co-editor for her senior year, 1949-1950. The Bradford was then published six times a year. Usually around late October, right before Christmas, and then early February, late March, late April, and early June in time for graduation. Working through this archive proved very fascinating. Much of the paper is like the crummy paper in mass market paperbacks: its acidity eating it away to the point where it is very brittle and crumbly. This is the first ...