Paperback editions of The Letters of Sylvia Plath Published Today

Today, Faber issues in the United Kingdom the first paperback edition of both volumes of The Letters of Sylvia Plath. They each carry forward the original cover photographs but do not judge these books by their covers. We had the opportunity to make corrections and updates to some of the text and to footnotes based both on reader inquires as well as our own review of the hardbacks. Naturally we apologize that transcription errors that were not caught. Additionally, we have added an Appendix to each book with new letters. Here is a breakdown of them.

Volume I: 7 Letters
To June Johnson Helle, circa 21 March 1943
To June Johnson Helle, 14 June 1950
To Katherine Benion, 3 March 1951
To Perry Norton, 11 October 1952
To Perry Norton, 5 December 1952
To Shirley Baldwin Waring and Perry Norton, 8 June 1953
To Rosamund Pugh Swaim, circa 11 January 1956

Volume II: 2 Letters
To Smith Vocational Office, circa 26 August 1957
To Smith Vocational Office, circa 8 September 1958

Particularly in Volume I's Appendix, we see a small chorus of new recipients of letters.

At my begging, Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick went to the Lilly Library to look through the Wagner-Martin mss there and it was she who located the Norton/Waring letters. Thanks to Julie for that, and to David Trinidad who found the letters to Daniel and Helga Huws in that collection previously. The Benion was sold at auction. I located the rest. There was an additional letter that I had hoped could be put into Volume II, from Plath (co-written by Ted Hughes) to Elizabeth and David Sigmund from June 1962, that was part of the Harriet Rosenstein collection. However, since not all of the letter was readable from a brief appearance of it online, as well because inquiry letters to Rosenstein were ignored, the decision was made to exclude it. So perhaps it is something to look forward to reading in full in the future. Hope!

I have be contemplating posting on the blog a full list of the corrections. Would that be of interest?

A polite reminder: The Letters of Sylvia Plath will not, at the present time, be issued in paperback in the US by HarperCollins. Therefore, if you are interested in the corrected texts and the new letters, you will need to acquire the Faber paperbacks.

All links accessed 15 August and 19 September 2019.

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