At almost the eleventh hour in working on Volume 1 of The Letters of Sylvia Plath  (above) I received PDF's of the letters Plath wrote to Melvin Woody. There was a mad scramble to get the letters transcribed, proofed, annotated, and integrated into the volume before we reached the point of no returns (a.k.a. Indexing). But, they made it. And in my correspondence with Mr. Woody, he let it be known that he planned to give his original letters to Smith College. I got him in touch with Karen Kukil, and later in the year, Karen visited Mr. Woody in New Haven to officially acquire the originals for the collection at Smith College. They join other caches of letters Plath wrote to friends she made during her Smith College years (Ann Davidow-Goodman, Marcia Brown Stern, Elinor Friedman Klein, and Philip McCurdy). This blog post is simply done to announce that the letters are now formally a part of the Sylvia Plath Collection at Smith and open to researchers. They are physically stored ...

Lot 339 at the recent-ish Bonhams sale of the Property of Frieda Hughes was a lot that I was interested in and bid on. Unsuccessfully. When I found out that Christian White of Modern First Editions was the winner I looked forward to seeing what entire lot of 21 items included. The biggest reason this lot interested me was the first book listed in the catalogue description: "JENKINS (ALAN C.) White Horse and Black Bulls , AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY TO SYLVIA PLATH, inscribed "For Sylvia with every good wish and in the hope that you will stay in Devonshire. Alan" on the half-title, with later ownership inscription of Frieda Hughes, 1960." Jenkins was the step father of Plath's autumn 1962 live-in nurse Susan O'Neill-Roe Booth and who herself was the dedicatee of the poem "Cut". Susan's mother was Nancy Jenkins, who was secretary of the local bee keepers. They lived at a house called "Pear Trees" in Belstone, a village close ...

Dominic Winter, an auction house in England, recently featured a few Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes lots in their 21 June 2018 sale. In each instance the lot sold for more than the high estimate. Lot 838 was a lot of five Ted Hughes books and one Plath limited edition ( Child ). This sold for £220. Lot 866 was a very lovely first edition copy of Ariel (Faber) which sold for £500. Lot 867 was an uncorrected proof of The Colossus (Heinemann) which from the image appears to have been a stunning copy. This sold for £1,950. Lot 868 saw a nice looking first edition copy with a closed tear on the front of the dust jacket of Ariel  (Faber) sell for £420. On the previous day, 20 June 2018, Dominic Winter sold a 1967 copy of Plath's The Colossus  as part of a general lot which also featured J. D Salinger. Lot 535 sold for £130. It might be hard to think that any auction could ever possibly top the Bonhams event early this year selling the Property of Frieda Hughes. More ...