This was going to be a simple tweet about what happened "On this day" in Sylvia Plath's life, but it soon unraveled to be too much for a tweet...
On this day, 18 June 1953, Sylvia Plath was more than half-way through her stint as a Guest Editor at Mademoiselle magazine. She was just a day or so through her traumatic ptomaine poisoning which wiped out her schedule for a day or so. This post includes some of the information I acquired and used during the project to publish The Letters of Sylvia Plath.
On that particular Thursday, Plath toured the United Nations and had lunch and coffee there with Gary Karmiloff, whom she met through the Norton family. In the afternoon, Plath was scheduled to tour John Frederics Hats (then at 29 E. 48th Street, New York) but opted to, in stead, attend the UN trusteeship session. Here is an article from the Wellesley Townsman showing that Karmiloff stayed with the Nortons.
Kamirloff at the time lived on the 12th floor at 95 Christopher Street, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York. The building is now called The Gansvoort.
Later that evening, at 7 pm, she met with Mark von Slosmann for steak dinner and listened to him read "bad poetry". Von Slosmann was a friend of Bob Cochran, whom Plath met during her time in the summer of 1952 nannying for the Cantor family on Cape Cod. von Slosmann spent some time in 1953 submitting poetry to various places and a small archive of his letters is held in the Katharine Sergeant White Papers at Bryn Mawr College. Here is his signature.
But the point of this point is to perhaps provide some context on what Sylvia Plath heard at the UN. The New York Times reported on page 13 the following day on the proceedings of the 18th:
The entire "Index to Proceedings of the Trusteeship Council" is available online. It was the 12th Session and took place from 16 June to 22 July 1953.
And of course many of these events appeared in The Bell Jar.
All links accessed 18 June 2020.
On this day, 18 June 1953, Sylvia Plath was more than half-way through her stint as a Guest Editor at Mademoiselle magazine. She was just a day or so through her traumatic ptomaine poisoning which wiped out her schedule for a day or so. This post includes some of the information I acquired and used during the project to publish The Letters of Sylvia Plath.
On that particular Thursday, Plath toured the United Nations and had lunch and coffee there with Gary Karmiloff, whom she met through the Norton family. In the afternoon, Plath was scheduled to tour John Frederics Hats (then at 29 E. 48th Street, New York) but opted to, in stead, attend the UN trusteeship session. Here is an article from the Wellesley Townsman showing that Karmiloff stayed with the Nortons.
Kamirloff at the time lived on the 12th floor at 95 Christopher Street, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York. The building is now called The Gansvoort.
Later that evening, at 7 pm, she met with Mark von Slosmann for steak dinner and listened to him read "bad poetry". Von Slosmann was a friend of Bob Cochran, whom Plath met during her time in the summer of 1952 nannying for the Cantor family on Cape Cod. von Slosmann spent some time in 1953 submitting poetry to various places and a small archive of his letters is held in the Katharine Sergeant White Papers at Bryn Mawr College. Here is his signature.
But the point of this point is to perhaps provide some context on what Sylvia Plath heard at the UN. The New York Times reported on page 13 the following day on the proceedings of the 18th:
The entire "Index to Proceedings of the Trusteeship Council" is available online. It was the 12th Session and took place from 16 June to 22 July 1953.
And of course many of these events appeared in The Bell Jar.
All links accessed 18 June 2020.
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