Happy Sylvia Plath Info Blog New Year!
In the autumn of 2016, I spent a lot of time during my lunch hour at work going to the Boston Public Library to re-examine all the microfilmed newspapers that they hold re-searching for articles on Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt. I did this because at the same time I was transcribing all the articles, for you, I felt it was important to re-check everything. Also, I made new scans of some of the articles that originally were of lesser quality because of the great advances made in microfilm readers since circa 2005-2012.
In the end, I found a number of articles that I missed in my previous researches. It is important to admit that I missed them. Some of the articles were from other editions of a particular newspaper issue and I can only think that when I first started looking for these articles in the first place that I did not place as much bibliographic emphasis/attention on these. And some of them I found because they were not at first about Plath, but mention her disappearance and discovery. Such as all the articles on fellow Wellesley resident Penelope Protze, who lived quite close to Plath at 41 Martin Road.
The total articles at the present time stands at 214, which is simply astounding to me considering that when I started the project, I knew of about seven to ten as were recorded in Stephen Tabor's Sylvia Plath: An Analytical Bibliography! And you can see the progress that has been made since I published my first bibliography of articles in my essay "'They Had to Call and Call': The Search for Sylvia Plath." I have asked this a number of times and yet no one has seemed to taken up the challenge: If you live or have access to town or university libraries that have microfilm from 1953. Please do consider a visit to see if any newspaper not listed in the bibliography linked below to search for articles on Plath's first suicide attempt. You need only check from 25 to 28 August. Thank you if you do.
The point of this blog post is not to necessary point out how terrible of a researcher I was and/or am, but to let you know that the transcriptions of all the articles are now on my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is. Please visit the Bibliography of Newspaper Articles on Sylvia Plath's First Suicide Attempt in August 1953. In the transcriptions, I tried to be exact so if there was a misspelling in the article, it appears in the document. Also, if word was broken up by a line break, I have placed in square brackets the complete spelling of that word after it. I loaded them in early December, so visitors to this page may have already taken advantage of them. But, also, Google appears to have cached, full-text, most if not all of the articles so I hope this drives interest in Plath and traffic to my site!
I hope truly that you find all of this work useful. If any of you do take the time to search for articles on Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt in your own town/college library, please know how grateful I will be.
All links accessed 16 November 2016 and 31 December 2016.
In the autumn of 2016, I spent a lot of time during my lunch hour at work going to the Boston Public Library to re-examine all the microfilmed newspapers that they hold re-searching for articles on Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt. I did this because at the same time I was transcribing all the articles, for you, I felt it was important to re-check everything. Also, I made new scans of some of the articles that originally were of lesser quality because of the great advances made in microfilm readers since circa 2005-2012.
In the end, I found a number of articles that I missed in my previous researches. It is important to admit that I missed them. Some of the articles were from other editions of a particular newspaper issue and I can only think that when I first started looking for these articles in the first place that I did not place as much bibliographic emphasis/attention on these. And some of them I found because they were not at first about Plath, but mention her disappearance and discovery. Such as all the articles on fellow Wellesley resident Penelope Protze, who lived quite close to Plath at 41 Martin Road.
The total articles at the present time stands at 214, which is simply astounding to me considering that when I started the project, I knew of about seven to ten as were recorded in Stephen Tabor's Sylvia Plath: An Analytical Bibliography! And you can see the progress that has been made since I published my first bibliography of articles in my essay "'They Had to Call and Call': The Search for Sylvia Plath." I have asked this a number of times and yet no one has seemed to taken up the challenge: If you live or have access to town or university libraries that have microfilm from 1953. Please do consider a visit to see if any newspaper not listed in the bibliography linked below to search for articles on Plath's first suicide attempt. You need only check from 25 to 28 August. Thank you if you do.
The point of this blog post is not to necessary point out how terrible of a researcher I was and/or am, but to let you know that the transcriptions of all the articles are now on my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is. Please visit the Bibliography of Newspaper Articles on Sylvia Plath's First Suicide Attempt in August 1953. In the transcriptions, I tried to be exact so if there was a misspelling in the article, it appears in the document. Also, if word was broken up by a line break, I have placed in square brackets the complete spelling of that word after it. I loaded them in early December, so visitors to this page may have already taken advantage of them. But, also, Google appears to have cached, full-text, most if not all of the articles so I hope this drives interest in Plath and traffic to my site!
I hope truly that you find all of this work useful. If any of you do take the time to search for articles on Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt in your own town/college library, please know how grateful I will be.
All links accessed 16 November 2016 and 31 December 2016.
As always, this is awesome, Peter. Thank you. Jess
ReplyDeleteHi Jess -- You're very welcome. There is a great deal of redundant information in the articles, generally, as would be expected. However, in reading them all, one begins to notice little gems of information littered around and about. At least I did. Happy New Year. ~pks
ReplyDelete