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Articles about Sylvia Plath: A Bibliography

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 other books the assembled lists of articles. I have limited my scope largely to articles in English as that is the only language I can read, and it is also the predominant language in which Plath is discussed. I am particularly excited to publish this list now as 2018 is the 20th anniversary of my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is.

The Articles about Sylvia Plath link is now active on the bibliography page of my website. It joins other lists of articles such as reviews of Plath's books and articles on her first suicide attempt. Before I converted the document to HTML, the list of articles stretched to more than 160 pages.

The document is imperfect in many ways. For example, there are citations lacking some information. Dates and titles may even be "incorrect". The internet has in some ways wreaked havoc on the art of bibliography because not only do articles appear online both before, concurrently to, and after they are printed, but oftentimes the title in one format is different from the other. So what can you do? The best you can! I prefer the information refer to printed sources, but in some instances it was impossible for me to ascertain the preferred details. I have not numbered the entries either. This may disappoint some, but it is far easier not to do this. My apologies.

For online articles, there are no url's/links and this is because at the beginning of this project url's were finicky, often broken, and sometimes just simply gone a short time later.

The document will be updated periodically throughout the year. If I have omitted an article, please do not take it personally! But, please do email me the citation in the format that matches those on the page.

All links accessed 16 and 26 November and 1 December 2018.

Comments

  1. Thank you so much for this, Peter. This is SUCH a valuable resource for those of us who are in the process of writing about Plath.

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  2. Thank you for your hard work! Can't wait to look through these. I'm enjoying Letters, Volume 2. I was wondering, as I read about Plath getting hired to teach at Smith- have we ever heard from any of the girls she had as students? Sylvia was so hard on herself and anxious during her time teaching- I'm wondering what it was like from the student's perspective. I can't recall if I've come across anything about this in the biographies that I have read.

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  3. My pleasure, Annika! I'm thrilled that you feel this way about this endeavor!! ~pks

    Elizabeth -- You're very welcome. I'm glad you're enjoying the letters. Amanda Golden published some recollections of one of Plath's students a while back. And I recently found some additional memories that where published a few days ago. Hope these help. ~pks

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