Sylvia Plath Collections: Nancy Hunter Steiner

Box 4, Folder 13 holds the interview notes and correspondence with Nancy Hunter Steiner, Plath's Harvard Summer School roommate and author of A Closer Look at Ariel (Harper's Magazine Press, 1973, and Faber, 1974). The book was published with an introduction by the late George Steiner.

Hunter Steiner was "involved" with Plath at a critical point in her life from the winter and spring of 1954 through Plath's senior year. This was the period of Plath's return after the breakdown and after McLean Hospital.

In parts, Hunter Steiner's memoir is really revealing in good many ways. They are more candid than the printed book. She directly calls Plath a "parasite", something not mentioned so explicitly in the book. Curiously, she had the same feeling during the 1954 Summer School term at Harvard, verbatim, as Ted Hughes expressed to Jillian Becker after Plath's death, at her funeral in fact: "it was either her or me".

Dabbling in gossip, Hunter Steiner suggests Plath might have been involved with Al Fisher, and she remembers "Apparel for April" and "Song of a Superfluous Spring" for the usage of what she considers some unusual words "denim" (former) and "calico" (latter), respectively.

Claims Plath had the attitude of "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too" regarding things like nail polish and, even, men.

In sum, Hunter Steiner found Plath not thoughtful; never a conversation with any depth.

The folder includes a typescript of Hunter Steiner's A Closer Look at Ariel.

Definitely some interesting perspectives. There is some content in the interview about Irwin/Edwin of real life and The Bell Jar fame.

What you learn in reading one person's file is that there are connections to several other people in the story of the life of Sylvia Plath. They keep appearing all over the place. Plath is a connective figure, which is something Gail, Elizabeth Sigmund and I frequently discussed. In the most unpredictable ways, Sylvia Plath brought people together when she was alive, and well into the future.

All links accessed 4 February 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...

Some final photographs of Sylvia Plath

Susan O'Neill-Roe took a series of photographs of Sylvia Plath and her children from October to late November (or maybe early December) 1962 while she was a day nanny/mother's help at Court Green. From nearby Belstone , it was a short drive to North Tawton and the aid she provided enabled Plath to complete the masterful October and November poems and also to make day or overnight trips to London for poetry business and other business. Some of O'Neill-Roe's photographs are well-known. However, a cache of photographs formed a part of the papers of failed biographer Harriet Rosenstein. They were sold separately from the rest of her papers that went to Emory. I was fortunate enough to see low resolution scans of them a while back so please note these are being posted today as mere reference quality images. There are two series here. The first of the children with Plath dressed in red and black. (This should be referred to in the future, please, as Plath's Stendhal-c...

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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