Sylvia Plath Collections: 2020

One of the things that is a recurring theme is Rosenstein's interest in identifying the "Isidis" enlargement that was so important to Sylvia Plath and has built up around it a sort of mythic status. Time and time again, Rosenstein probes and wonders and asks her interview subjects about it. One has to presume she saw the photograph of Plath in front of it in Chalcot Square holding her daughter Frieda, and grew curious...

Elizabeth Sigmund, who saw it in person in Court Green, says of it in her (rather epic, 21 pages of) interview notes: "it had immense power in the whole stature of the woman—it was very beautiful."

We possibly take the "Isidis" poster for granted. We probably take a lot of granted now since we know so much more than was generally know in the first decade following Plath's death.

However, for as much we may think we know, there is still a lot we do not know. Rosenstein's archive could have resolved a lot of questions I have personally had over the years. So while I am grateful to have access to it now, as I am sure many of you are, I regret and lament that for whatever the reason some of Plath scholarship has been held up.

I plan to post more snippets from the archive this week and through the 10th. On the 11th of February I have something else in mind. Consider all these as the Great Sylvia Plath Info Blog Marathon Challenge of 2020.

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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