Sylvia Plath In Context: Essays edited by Tracy Brain

Published today by the Cambridge University Press is Sylvia Plath In Context, edited by Tracy Brain (Amazon.co.uk).

From the book blurb on CUP's website:

Sylvia Plath in Context brings together an exciting combination of established and emerging thinkers from a range of disciplines. The book reveals Plath's responses to the writers she reads, her interventions in the literary techniques and forms she encounters, and the wide range of cultural, personal, artistic, political, historical and geographical influences that shaped her work. Many of these essays confront the specific challenges for reading Sylvia Plath today. Others evaluate her legacy to the writers who followed her. Reaching well beyond any simple equation in which biographical cause results in literary effect, all of them argue for a body of work that emerges from Plath's deep involvement in the world she inhabits. Situating Plath's writing within a wide frame of references that reach beyond any single notion of self, this book will be a vital resource for students, scholars, instructors and researchers of Sylvia Plath.

Below is a list of the essays in volume.

Part I. Literary Contexts:
1. Plath and the American poetry scene by Jonathan Ellis
2. The dominant trends in British poetry of the 1950s and early 1960s by Eleanor Spencer
3. Plath and the classics by Holly Ranger
4. Plath and the radio drama by Andrew Walker
5. 'Sincerely yours': Plath and The New Yorker by Peter K. Steinberg

Part II. Literary Technique and Influence:
6. Plath in the context of Stevie Smith by Noreen Masud
7. Plath's whimsy by Will May
8. Sylvia Plath and you by Tracy Brain
9. Plath and the lyric by Lucy Tunstall
10. Plath and the pastoral by Iain Twiddy

Part III. Cultural Contexts:
11. Plath and food by Gerard Woodward
12. Plath and fashion by Rebecca C. Tuite
13. Experimental bravery: Plath's poetry and auteur cinema by Lynda Bundtzen
14. Plath and television by Nicola Presley
15. Plath and art by Jane Hedley

Part IV. Sexual and Gender Contexts:
16. 'Minor scandal': queer writing contexts for The Bell Jar by Beatrice Hitchman
17. 'Woman-haters were like gods': The Bell Jar and violence against women in 1950s America by Kate Harding
18. Sylvia Plath and the culture of hygiene by Laura Perry

Part V. Political and Religious Contexts:
19. The Bell Jar, the Rosenbergs and the problem of the enemy within by Robin Peel
20. Religious contexts for Sylvia Plath's work by Gail Crowther
21. Plath and nature by Richard Kerridge
22. Plath and war by Cornelia Pearsall

Part VI. Biographical Contexts:
23. Sylvia Plath's journals by Sally Bayley
24. Plath's teaching and the shaping of her work by Amanda Golden
25. Electroshock therapy and Plath's convulsive poetics by Anita Helle
26. Plath's scrapbooks by Peter K. Steinberg
27. Beyond letters home: Plath's unabridged correspondence by Karen V. Kukil

Part VII. Plath and Place:
28. 'A certain minor light': Sylvia Plath in Brontë country by Sarah Corbett
29. Plath in London by Elaine Feinstein
30. Plath in Devon: growing words out of isolation by Maeve O'Brien

Part VIII. The Creative Afterlife:
31. An alternative afterlife: Plath's experimental poetics by Gareth Farmer
32. British and American editions of Ariel and The Bell Jar by Elena Rebollo-Cortés
33. After Plath: the legacy of influence by Fiona Sampson
34. P(l)athography: Sylvia Plath and her biographers by Heather Clark

The book is expensive, coming in at £85.00. The ISBN is 978-1108470131. It will be available in the US on 30 September 2019 for $110 (Amazon.com).

All links accessed 14 and 22 August 2019.

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...

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