More articles on Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt

As I routinely do, I continue to search for articles on Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt in August 1953. Earlier in the year, I found a number of new articles and these are all now on the bibliography page of Articles on her disappearance and recovery.

Articles were found in the following newspapers:

The Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Florida)
The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah)
Wilkes-Barre Record (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania)
The Birmingham News (Birmingham, Alabama)
The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida)
Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, Pennsylvania)
Public Opinion (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania)
The Millville Daily Republican (Millville, New Jersey)
The York Dispatch (York, Pennsylvania)
Daily News (New York, New York)
The Tribune (Scranton, Pennsylvania)
Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin)
The Morning News (Wilmington, Delaware)
Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)
St Josephs News Press Gazette (St. Joseph, Missouri)
Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia)
The Windsor Star (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)
The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
The Morning Call (Paterson, New Jersey)
Rutland Daily Herald (Rutland, Vermont)
The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts)
The Bangor Daily News  (Bangor, Maine)
St. Albans Daily Messenger  (St. Albans, Vermont)
Burlington Daily News (Burlington, Vermont)
The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

In total, there are now 306 articles.

And, did you see that? Go back and read through those titles and cities again...

The Windsor Star (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)!

This is the first article from another country! Sylvia Plath's disappearance was not just national news. It was international news. Confirmed. That is amazing.

All links accessed 13 July 2020.

Letters of Sylvia Plath: A Footnote

When Sylvia Plath visited Richard Norton at the Ray Brook tuberculosis hospital in Saranac Lake, New York, after Christmas in December 1952, she broke her leg. During that visit, Plath met a Dr. William Sanford Lynn and his wife Mary Elisabeth Lynn. They had a young boy, William Sanford Lynn, III. Plath seemed to get on very well with the Lynn family.

A late decision I made in editing Plath's Letters was to include the letter excerpts that had appeared in Plath's journals. I felt that they would add a certain something to the book, particularly the many letter excerpts to Richard Sassoon. But, there were other letter excerpts to Eddie Cohen and Richard Norton. Including them all meant they would be annotated to the same standard that the rest of Plath's letters were.

Plath's letter excerpt from 8 March 1953 to Richard Norton is one such example and was done in reply to his three letters written on 4, 6, and 7 March. He had related how the Lynn's young boy Sandy had accidentally died. A notice of the death appeared on page one of the 6 March 1953 Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

This was an example of an emotionally difficult footnote to investigate.

All links accessed 5 August 2019.

The Sylvia Plath Zoomposium III Now on YouTube

On Saturday, 25 July 2020, Gail Crowther and I hosted our third and final Sylvia Plath Zoomposium. The featured speakers were: Janet Badia, Marsha Bryant, Emmeline Downie, Olivia Foster, Gillian Groszewski, Natalie Hurt, Craig Johnson, Jeremy Lowenthal, and Laura McKenzie.

We are proud to announce that the recording is now available on the Sylvia Plath Info YouTube Channel. Please note Gillian Groszewski's presentation was removed.

We are grateful to all thirty total speakers for their generosity and willingness to prepare talks on such short notice, to help feel a sense of community during a strange period in our lives. And thank you, of course, to all the people that registered for and attended the events.

All links accessed 28 July and 1 August 2020.