Sylvia Plath's Postcards: 29 June 1961, Rouen, France

Sylvia Plath sent three picture postcards to her mother when she and Ted Hughes visited France in June and July 1961. The purpose was a holiday, but also to go to the farmhouse of Dido and W. S. Merwin in Lacan de Loubressac. This post is about the first card; the other two will be highlighted in a bit. These are the last three picture postcards that we know Plath sent. Meaning, she might have sent others, but if she did we did not have access to them for The Letters of Sylvia Plath project.

The first picture postcard that Plath sent to her mother depicted "ROUEN (Seine-Maritime) Le Gros Horloge (1389) L'Arcade (1151)."

Dated Thursday, 29 June 1961, the postmark was from Rouen, Seine Maritime, France, on the same day. The postcard was published by Les Editions d'Art, 15 rue Martel, in the 10th Arrondissement. The stamp was .30 Francs and depicted Jean Nicot designed by J. Combet. The postcard is numbered "1" in pencil in the top right corner above the stamp.

Plath and Hughes were waiting for their cafe au laits having crossed over to France the previous day, the 28th. They had been to a "superb beach" (Berck Plage) where they swam and collected shells for Frieda.

Plath addressed the postcard:

Mrs. A. S. Plath
c/o HUGHES
3 Chalcot Square
Londres N.W.1
Angleterre

The postcard is mis-dated in pencil as '[1961, July 13]" in an unknown hand. However based on internal evidence and careful scrutiny of the admittedly complicated postmark, the letter was undoubtedly written on the 29th of June.

The full text of the postcard appears on page 628-9 of The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II, 1956-1963.

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

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 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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