Update: These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath

Recently, Gail Crowther (website; twitter) and I submitted our final edits to the publisher Fonthill for our forthcoming book of essays These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath. Currently, we are reviewing page proofs. The timetable for the rest of the pre-publication process is unknown. But progress is being made which is wonderful! We were excited to learn, also, that listings for the book are now Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

And, it gives us great pleasure here to post here the cover for our book:

The Amazon's seem to say that TGA will be published on 11 May 2017. However, the following press release indicates that the book will be published on 25 May 2017. Not sure at this point in time which is correct. All that does matter is that the book is coming out and that you are going to have your socks knocked off by the essays.

Writing this book was such a joy. From the start to (nearly at the) finish, I cannot express how thrilling each essay was to research and discuss and write. We were afforded the opportunity to revise each piece from their original appearances. We feel we greatly improved them (at the expense of some of our archival stories, sadly) for publication. At the same time, though, we were able to bring to your attention brand new archival discoveries and three new, original chapters.

All links accessed 25 January 2017.

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...

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