2018!!! To quote Tori Amos, it was a "pretty good year"!! In fact it seems the last few years have been filled with Sylvia Plath! That is a good thing. This is, as usual, a blog post recapping the year of Sylvia Plath as it appeared in this blog and in my life and I hope that somehow there is a confluence with how you perceived Plath in yours. In December 2017, I found out about the big Bonhams auction but was asked to stay quiet on it. Which was difficult, but necessary. So to keep that at bay I decided to post right off the bat about the 43 newly located articles on Plath's first suicide attempt . I just can't stop looking for Sylvia Plath. In January I helped to proof the Bonhams sales catalogue, found out that Smith College was going to get the Ruth Beuscher letters, and started the first round of proofing of the second volume of Plath's letters. I guess you could say that the year started out on fire! At the Belfast Plath conference in November 2017, I...

The Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas holds a portion of the Critical Quarterly Archive ( summary of contents ). It was purchased in 1968 from Argosy Books in New York and contains: "584 Letters (including 9 retained copies of letters from CQ ), Manuscript fair copies of poems, reviews, essays, and proofs." The abstract to the collections says: Archives (letters received; some texts and proofs): of literary magazine. Submissions of material to Critical Quarterly ; friendly personal news; literary gossip; academic life. Some polite notes from famous names. Some material concerning Cox or Dyson rather than the Critical Quarterly . As you might imagine, they contain Sylvia Plath archival materials... There are ten letters from Plath to the journal's editors A. E. Dyson and C. B. Cox from 1960 to 1961. I learned of the collection first through Linda Wagner-Martin's wonderful Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life (1999, 2nd e...

A six-page handwritten letter that Sylvia Plath wrote to Katherine Benion on 3 March 1951 appeared at auction today at Bonhams, New York. Lot number 212 was estimated to sell for $7,000-$10,000 dollars, which averages to a minimum of $1,166.6666666667 per page! The lot sold for $10,000 which includes the buyers premium. Hammer price was $8,000. Images from Bonhams From the catalog description: Autograph Letter Signed ("Sylvia Plath"), to Miss Katherine Benion, concerning how she got started in writing, 6 pp (on 2 pairs of conjoining leaves), 8vo, [Northampton, MA], March 3, 1951, in ink on blue-bordered patterned stationery, folded, light handling smudges. Provenance: Family of the recipient, by descent. A remarkable early Plath letter discussing her budding career as a writer, written when she was just 18 years old and attending Smith College. "... that's the total of my 'published' record — two poems, a story, an article and a story to app...

One cannot deny that reading Sylvia Plath's works fills each of us with immense pleasure. It is also a thought-provoking activity which often leads to writing about Plath. Many of us have done it and will continue to do it. Articles about Plath show how she was viewed at the time of their publication as well as reflect the education and (potential) biases of the writer. They are a rich history of perspectives and form the foundation upon which our current interpretation(s) and understanding(s) of Plath's works and life are built. And they potentially forecast how Plath scholarship will develop in the future, too. Or, at least, in some instances, show us how far we have come. I have been at work for about fifteen years or so on an updated bibliography of articles about Sylvia Plath that is built from Stephen Tabor's Sylvia Plath: An Analytical Bibliography (1987). Additional bibliographies by Meyering (1990), Lane and Stevens (1978), and Northouse and Walsh (1974) are oth...

A recent listing on HarperCollins website (and Amazon.com) confirms that they will publish Sylvia Plath's short story  Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom , first written in December 1952 and revised in January 1953, under the Harper Perennial imprint. HarperCollins is offering a  paperback  (ISBN: 978-0062940834) on sale on 15 January) and  hardback  (ISBN: 978-0062940858) on 5 February. Visit  HarperCollins' Sylvia Plath page  for books and deals. In addition to paperback and hardback, it appears the HarperCollins edition of the book will be published in Kindle, too: 1)  Kindle for $6.99 on 15 January ; 2) Paperback for $9.99 on 15 January  (Amazon); and 3) Hardback for $15.99 on 5 February  (Amazon). Faber paperback cover Faber, in England, will publish a paperback edition for £3.50 on 3 January 2019 (ISBN: 978-0571351732). News of the story's publication was first made in The Guardian . It is the first new Plath ...

Sylvia Plath archives are rather dispersed and so it can make locating documents tricky. So, in an effort to aid in locating typescripts and manuscripts of Plath's creative works, I have collated a spreadsheet called the Sylvia Plath Archival Documents Hub . There are four worksheets: Poetry, Prose, Correspondence, and Photographs. In the first two, Poetry and Prose, I am tracking only the manuscripts and typescripts. The largest worksheet consists of correspondence. This was developed as part of my tracking spreadsheet of Plath's letters for The Letters of Sylvia Plath project but I've included letters she received that survive, as well as letters that may relate to her in some fashion. There is a clear division at 11 February 1963 to indicate to you this is after Plath's life. It is not by any means complete in the latter category (post-11 February 1963). Now that Letters project is over, I felt the information was worth sharing. The fourth worksheet compil...

Novelist and biographer Andrew Wilson reports, in the 24-30 November 2018 Radio Times, that The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963 has been selected, like it's predecessor Volume 1 , as Radio 4's Book of the Week. Gen up on Sylvia Plath in today’s Radio Times c/o ⁦ @andrewwilson ready for next week’s @bbcr4 Book of the Week pic.twitter.com/w5CVAA2xdo — Fiona Hughes (@FionaNHughes) November 20, 2018 The letters, which many of you have now read, will be serialized on Radio 4 twice a day next week from Monday to Friday at 9:45 am and 12:30 pm. This is a thrill and honor, and is wonderful exposure both for Plath and for the book. All links accessed: 20 November 2018.

What a weekend in Boston! It was the annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fiar and as usual I browsed through booksellers stock looking specifically for Sylvia Plath books. But this fair had particular targets in view... I was particularly keen to see some of the volumes for sale that were part of the big Sylvia Plath/Ted Hughes auction at Bonhams of the property of Frieda Hughes . As such, I spent some time at a few booths. Apologies in advance for all the super dodgy cell phone photographs. But before I get to those, the primary reason for my attendance this year was to promote, sell, and sign (if wanted) some copies of both volumes of The Letters of Sylvia Plath . I was in Jett Whitehead's book for a good few hours promoting this book, talking to Jett and to many customers that stopped by. To my happiness some books sold and even some of the book dealers were buying copies. Sometimes it is hard to really consider just how many people are interested in these books...

This blog post was modified, to add links, on 12 December 2018.--pks The immediacy of Twitter has often inadvertently led to the absence of some information on Sylvia Plath appearing on this blog. For example, the reviews of the  Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2  have been tweeted and recorded on my bibliography of reviews of Plath's work on my website , but not here. So I thought I might do a little blog post to post the reviews and include links to however many that I can which appear online. Linking to reviews is presently a feature on my website that I do not take the time to do. Perhaps I should? Probably not, I still fear the breaking of links as it what so often happened earlier in this century. Here are the reviews, including some pieces which are more coverage of the book, of  Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2  that have been published to date (or will be shortly--Rollyson and Schoerke). Some are behind paywalls and one just is not online. Some wer...

This next weekend, 16-18 November, the Hynes Convention Center on Boylston Street, Boston, will host the 42nd annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair . This one will be a capital-D Delight. I say this because Jonkers Rare Books of Henley on Thames, England, will be showing off the most expensive Sylvia Plath proof book ever: her own proof copy of The Bell Jar  at their booth, 525. As we learned recently in the publication of The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2 , Plath received the proof shortly after she found out about Ted Hughes' affair with Assia Wevill. So her edits to the book date from after circa 10-11 July 1962. Incredible to think she was reviewing this at the same time as dealing with the marital issues as well as playing host to her mother, visiting Court Green, Devon, from Massachusetts. Anyway, I am truly excited to see this book and hope to review it carefully. Several years back I did a study of the " Textual Variations in The Bell Jar Publicat...

The full HarperCollins cover Today, HarperCollins publishes The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963  in the United States in both hardback book and Kindle edition. The book is available, as you might imagine, from Amazon as well as from the more traditional of bookstores (remember those?). Please visit the Faber edition publication blog post for some details you may find interesting. Perhaps the best aspect of having the book published on very separated dates is the fact that two celebrations are called for! If you need me, please look inside of a pint glass. In the days leading up to publication of the HarperCollins edition a number of reviews have appeared including: Alexander, Paul, " Sylvia Plath narrates her own decline. " The Washington Post . November 4, 2018. Chiasson, Dan. " 'The Girl That Things Happen To'. " The New Yorker . November 5, 2018. Haas, Lidija. " New Books. " Harper's . October 2018: 83-6. Seh...

Upon my last flight home from England I wrote a long blog post so felt like it was an appropriate us of time, when not partaking of quantities of free alcohol to neutralize the turbulence of flying against the wind, to do so again. From 21-28 October I was in England, as you might know. The purpose of the visit was a talk at the British Library on the 23rd October with The Letters or Sylvia Plath co-editor Karen V. Kukil, as well as scholar and biographer Heather Clark and poet Mark Ford. I am a terrible judge of my own performance, but I hope the event was conducted and performed, by each of us, successfully. It was terrific to see familiar faces and friends, and, as well, to meet so many new people. I did not get to meet as many people as I had hoped. I have recently learned that the event was recorded! And once it is made available online I will add a link here, as well as sent out a notice on Twitter. An informal pub meet-up at the Lamb on Lamb's Conduit Street, near Ru...

Back in June of 2008, Bloomsbury Auctions offered for sale an illustrated short story by Sylvia Plath entitled "Aunt Rennie and the Elves." Off and on since then I have made half-hearted attempts at finding it. Well, the other day I put a little more effort into it and found its hiding place. (In the end was not very hard to locate.) The Special Collections department of Middlebury College in Vermont is now the proud owner of the typed short story  which is signed at the end in pencil "By Sylvia." The catalog entry at Middlebury summarizes the story thus: "The story follows a young boy who comes to live with Aunt Rennie and the elves after being sent into the forest by his cruel stepfather". The story features two clipped illustrations from a product called Junket Rennet Powder by Vernon Grant. The advert, entered into US copyright on 29 January 1943, reads, "I go all over the world turning tears into happy smiles"... says Aunt Rennie. The ...