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Update: The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2

Hello! It is with great pleasure to let  you know that Sunday night, 29 April 2018, I sent in the files to Faber & Faber for The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963.

[twiddling thumbs]

        [still twiddling thumbs]

                       [now what to do?]

The HarperCollins edition,
to be published on 30 October 2018.

The files included the final, final, final, final, final, final (etc.) proof of book itself, the front matter, the image plates & captions, and the index. Having read the volume four times since last August already, I feel it a good book and certainly, obviously, picks up from where Volume 1 concludes. I am sure you have questions. However, as in the aftermath of finishing Volume 1, I am not able at the moment to discuss anything about the volume, so I do appreciate that each of you will not ask questions!  The UK cover is under review; so as soon as it is finalized and I have permission I will post in here and on Twitter, etc. 

Within the turning of one calendar year---the volumes are Irish twins, essentially---we have produced out two massive volumes of Plath's letters! All for you! And my head is spinning at how we did it. Of course the project started years ago and it is hard to remember a time when I was not working on the letters! The two volumes have more than 960,000 words! (The front matter and index easily bumps the word count to more than one million!) I nearly single-handedly transcribed and proofed Plath's letters (more than 1300 of them) and created the vast majority of the more than 3,600 footnotes. In addition, I selected the images, wrote all the captions, secured permissions, etc. My mantra throughout the project was a line from Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher": "There was only one place to get to." Well, we are just about there and to know that the second volume is 128 days (or just over 4 months) from publication, and thus into your hands, fills me with an enormous sense of happiness.  

It has been the privilege of my life to work on these books for you. I did my best and gave everything that I could to try to ensure that the text you read is as close as possible to the text of Plath's original letters (look for my tell-all book later in the year to be published by Career Enders, Inc.). Early mornings, sleepless nights: day in and day out, in sickness and in health, with probably fewer than a week of days off in the course of the project. My deepest thanks for the trust placed in my by Frieda Hughes. 

Look for The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2, to be published by Faber and Faber on 6 September 2018; and by HarperCollins on 30 October 2018. 

All links accessed 29 April 2018.
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