The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 1: 1940-1956 is officially published today by Faber & Faber in the United Kingdom. It is the moment many of us have been waiting for for a very long time. The 838 letters in Volume 1 begin on 19 February 1940 and end on 23 October 1956. The cut off date was intentional as that is the last letter Plath wrote before her 24th birthday. Thus Volume 2, you can deduce, begins with the first letter Plath wrote after turning 24. The book was edited by me (that's Peter K. Steinberg in case you forgot) and Karen V. Kukil. A number of readers of this blog and followers on Twitter have sent me messages and the like that the book is on the way. I find this level of excitement and enthusiasm for The Letters of Sylvia Plath so wonderful. So, thank you all for being patient as we built the book. There is more to come. Buy it from Faber , Amazon.co.uk , Book Depository . The HarperCollins edition will be published in the United States on 17 Octob

The following is a guest post by Gesa Matthies... The lady in the book – Sylvia Plath, portrait(s) Peter K. Steinberg generously proposed that I write this guest post. I met Peter when I started doing research for what was then a vague project: "a film on Sylvia Plath in the places where she lived and with people who live there today". Peter took me on a tour to some Plath places around Boston and Winthrop. We stopped in front of Plath's old house close to the waterfront on Johnson Avenue, at Yirell Beach where he showed me the house where Plath's grandparents lived and at Winthrop cemetery to see her father's grave. The tour went on to Mclean Hospital where Peter pointed out the network of subterranean passageways that connect the different houses. That was in 2012. The film is now finished and is called The lady in the book – Sylvia Plath, portrait(s) . I filmed this at places where Plath had lived or stayed and I filmed women who live there today. They

The Grolier Club in New York City will host the exhibition "'This is the light of the mind': Selections from the Sylvia Plath collection of Judith G. Raymo" which opens today, 20 September 2017, and runs through 4 November 2017. On Thursday, 12 October, the Grolier will host a Sylvia Plath Symposium from 6:00 PM-8:00 PM. Speakers include Karen Kukil, Associate Director of Special Collections, Smith College; Peter K. Steinberg, co-editor of The Letters of Sylvia Plath ; and Heather Clark, Fellow, Leon Levy Center for Biography, CUNY Graduate Center. Moderator: Judith Raymo. Other details TBA. No charge, but reservations are requested. RSVPs from non-members should go to Grolier Club Administrative Assistant Maev Brennan, tel. (212) 838-6690, or e-mail mbrennan@grolierclub.org. A stunningly produced catalog has been printed and copies will be for sale via Oak Knoll. Looking forward to giving a talk and to meeting who ever shows up! The Grolier Club is lo

For her third year at Smith College, Sylvia Plath changed houses from Haven to Lawrence. Lawrence House is a co-operative house and residents performed jobs in exchange for a reduced tuition. Plath roomed this year with Mary Bonneville, a senior. The room numbers have changed, but from descriptions, Plath and Bonneville lived in either room 6 on the second floor or room 24 on the third floor. With a major of English declared, Plath's studies this year were dominated by courses in this subject. She was required to take a Science course and this caused her quite a bit of concern. Plath was heavily involved with Press Board and other extra-curricular activities. During the first semester, her more-or-less steady boyfriend Richard Norton was diagnosed with tuberculosis while a student at Harvard Medical School and was treated at a sanatorium at Ray Brook, New York. Plath's notebooks for Medieval Literature, Milton, Modern Poetry, and Physical Science are held in Plath mss

For a long time now, 2017 has appeared to be a banner, monumental year for Sylvia Plath with so much happening. So, last winter I pitched an article idea to the good people at Fine Books & Collections on Sylvia Plath and to my absolute happiness, they said yes and made it a feature-like story. Thus I got to work on what became "The Persistence of Plath" which is out now in the Autumn 2017 issue. My article discusses the National Portrait Gallery's One Life: Sylvia Plath exhibit; a member exhibit titled "This is the light of the mind: Selections from the Sylvia Plath Collection of Judith G. Raymo at the Grolier Club in New York City; and the publication of the  Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 1.  I also mention conference Sylvia Plath: Letters, Words, Fragments. One Life  opened on 30 June and runs through 20 May 2018 and by now you know a lot about it. Raymo's exhibit runs from 20 September to 4 November 2017. The Letters of Sylvia Plath are publish