Sylvia Plath Collections: Boxes 1 and 2

Today and tomorrow I thought it might be fun to show you what the files "look" like in the Harriet Rosenstein research files on Sylvia Plath. There are 99 total folders of paper in four boxes. The finding aid is an excellent starting place to give the researcher an idea of what is in the box. But it only goes so far in what it is describing. A collection like this has importance, but not enough value to warrant an item listing in the making of its finding aid. However, having access to all the files, and the desire to be able to find materials on my computer, I have made an item list of what is in the collection. My sincere thanks to the people at Emory for their assistance in obtaining photographs of these materials and especially to Emily Banks for taking the photos. The following are boxes 1 and 2. (Please note that several folders were skipped.)

Box 1

Folder 1: Alfred A. Knopf

Folder 2: Al Alvarez

Folder 3: Elizabeth Ames & Cyrilly Abels

Folder 4: John Avery

Folder 5: Nancy Axworthy & Alan and Nancy Jenkins

Folder 6: Ruth Beuscher

Folder 7: Leonard Baskin

Folder 8: Jillian Becker

Folder 9: Connie Taylor Blackwell

Folder 10: Harold Bloom

Folder 11: Susan Booth

Folder 12: Sally Rosenthal Brody

Folder 13: Susan Weller Burch

Folder 14: Kay Burton, Evelyn Evans, and "Cambridge ladies"

Folder 15: Edward Butscher

Folder 16: Margaret Cantor

Folder 18: David Compton

Folder 19: Wilbury Crockett

Folder 20: Winifred Davies

Folder 21: Robert Gorham Davis

Folder 22: Peter and Jane Davison

Folder 24: Patric Dickinson

Folder 25: Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe

Folder 26: Stephen Fassett

Folder 27: Catherine Frankfort

Folder 28: Michael Frayn

Folder 29: David Freeman

Folder 30: George Gibian and Smith College English faculty

Folder 31: Karen Goodall

Folder 32: Robert Gottlieb

Box 2

Folder 1: Claiborne Handleman

Folder 2: John Horder

Folder 3: Hughes family

Folder 4: Frieda Hughes

Folder 5: Olwyn Hughes

Folder 6: Dan Jacobson

Folder 7: Alan and Nancy Jenkins

Folder 8: Marvin Kane

Folder 9: Alfred Kazin

Folder 10: Elinor Klein

Folder 11: Jane Baltzell Kopp

Folder 12: Dorothea Krook

Folder 13: Gordon Lameyer

Folder 14: Doris Lessing

Folder 15: Christopher Levenson

Folder 16: Lisa L. Levy and Connie Taylor Blackwell

Folder 17: Edward Lucie Smith

Folder 18: Suzette and Helder Macedo

Folder 19: Enid Mark

Folder 20: Frances McCullough

Folder 21: W. S. Merwin

Folder 22: Iko and Felicity Meshoulam

Folder 23: Nora Milici and Elizabeth O'Malley

Folder 24: I.V. Morris

Folder 25: Richard Murphy

Folder 26: Newnham College

Folder 27: Perry and Shirley Norton

Folder 28: Peter Orr

That is it for these boxes. Tomorrow will be boxes 3 and 4; and then I am taking a break from these archival posts. That is how the collection looks today.

Some of the processing and organization of the collection is problematic. For example there are individual folders for Connie Taylor Blackwell (B1, F9) and Alan and Nancy Jenkins (B2, F7), yet they have materials in other, combined folders, B2, F16 and B1 F5, respectively. Feels like a game of Battleship there! At any rate, this likely represents "original order" which is important in archives. However, in cases like these, the way Rosenstein stored the materials is irrelevant. The common sense thing to do is to shuffle things a little, to put like with like. It just makes sense.

All links accessed 7 February 2020

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