Today is the official publication day of the HarperCollins edition of Sylvia Plath's Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom . The ISBN for the HarperCollins edition of Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom is 978-0-06-294083-4 and copies are reasonably priced at $9.99. Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom is for sale via the link above to HarperCollins' website, as well as from Amazon and other booksellers. The book is also available in a Kindle edition . For a short story, it has received an intense amount of press which is a fantastic thing, even when some of the press is bizarre, filled with mistakes, etc. But, the press is the press... The first article appear was Richard Lea. " 'It's about breaking out': Unseen short story by Sylvia Plath to be published. " The Guardian . October 27, 2018: 3. Several other articles were published after but they did not present additional information, I don't think. "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom...

There is something about Mary Ventura... Sylvia Plath's recently published story, "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom", is the first new fictional prose of Plath's published in the US (or any country, really), since 1970s. As such, it is appropriate for there to be some media attention about it. However, some of that media attention sprung up due to poor word choices and possibly a general ignorance or a misunderstanding about libraries, archives, typescripts, etc. It needs a hashtag and a -gate, though, in order to truly achieve the sublime and the ridiculous. Is it #MaryGate? #LostGate? The Lilly Library raised questions about The New Yorker 's use of the term "lost" in a series of tweets , which lead to an article by Sarah Bahr  in the Indianapolis Star . (Please note that in the Star piece, Plath won Mademoiselle's  College Fiction contest in 1952, not 1951. And The New Yorker  incorrect reports that Judith Raymo found the story in th...

Back on 15 April 2014, I did a blog post on "Dating Sylvia Plath's Journals". The point of it was to show how the Letters of Sylvia Plath , in conjunction with additional archival resources--Plath's and otherwise--could be used to date undated entries in Plath's journals. Now that both volumes are published and I had a bit more time on my hands, I revisited Plath's published Journals to see how many more entries could be dated exactly, approximately, or just not at all. There is not much to criticize about the published Journals , but I have always wished there were supplied dates for undated entries. Using a variety of resources, including Plath's letters, wall and pocket calendars, and other archival resources, I have gone through the book and assigned exact and circa dates for the undated entries. I hope that you find this useful. And, please let me know if I am incorrect with any of these, or if you have information which can help more accurately d...

Though it has been available for a week or so in the United Kingdom, today is the official publication day of the Faber & Faber edition of Sylvia Plath's Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom . It is a small format paperback of 40 pages. The ISBN is 978-0-571-35173-2 and copies are reasonably priced at £3.50. The book is for sale via the link above to Faber's website, as well as from Amazon.co.uk , Waterstones , and other booksellers. If you are interested about Mary Ventura, please make sure to look at Plath's Journals, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 1 , and my blog post: " Sylvia Plath's Mary Ventura ". All links accessed 2 January 2019.

With the imminent publication of Sylvia Plath's short story "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom", her readers may wonder about the name "Mary Ventura". Any reader of her diaries, journals, and letters will recognize it as that of a girl with whom Plath attended Wellesley public schools. Here is the real Mary Ventura's story. Mary Ventura was born Maria Domenica Ventura in Natick, Massachusetts, on 21 February 1932, daughter of Italian immigrants Joseph (1901-1977) and Adelia Di Giacomantonio (1910-1994) Ventura. According to information recorded in the 1930 Census, Joseph and Adelia married around 1925; he was 24 and she was 15. Joseph's occupation was listed as Gardener and in the Industry of "Odd jobs". Delia was not employed and the couple resided at 4 Waban Street, Natick. Sometime between 1932 and the mid 1940s, the Ventura family moved to Wellesley, the next town over. It was at Junior High School where Plath and Mary Ventura met ...