HarperCollins Reissues 4 Sylvia Plath Books

HarperCollins recently reissued four Sylvia Plath books with new covers on their Harper Perennial Modern Classics imprint.

The four books are: Ariel, Ariel: The Restored Edition, The Collected Poems, and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.

Ariel, (HarperCollins | Amazon) This is the first full reissue & repackaging of Plath's most famous collection of poems since 1999. It's also the first time, ever, in the US that Plath's Ariel is published with non-white/cream cover.

Ariel: The Restored Edition, (HarperCollins | Amazon) This is the first repackaging of Ariel: The Restored Edition since 2005, when it first appeared in paperback. I love, love, love the note on the back of the book: "Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it." Perfect.

The Collected Poems, (HarperCollins | Amazon) This is the first repackaging of both The Collected Poems and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams since 2008.

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, (HarperCollins | Amazon)

Books can be ordered from HarperCollins and Amazon.com (links above) and found in bookstores across the country.

If you are interested in a pictorial history, of sorts, of Plath's books (and books about Plath), please do head over to A celebration, this is, and visit the photo galleries.

And just because I can, now, here is the HarperCollins cover of The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963. As of right now, the book will be published in the US on 30 October in hardback and Kindle edition. The book will be published in the UK a bit earlier, on 6 September 2018. Get ready!

The photograph on the cover comes from Plath's passport photo from 1959. The passport itself is held by Emory University.

All links accessed 7 and 12 March 2018.

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

Search This Blog