Heather Clark's  Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath is published officially in the US today by Knopf.  The ISBN is 978-0307961167. The cover price is $36.The book is an outstanding 1,152 pages, with a comprehensive index and exhaustive, not to be missed notes. The reviews have been appearing since the summer. Due to delays in printing because of the world situation, the publication was pushed back several times. But now the book is officially out and readers will now get up to date with the most current life details on Sylvia Plath.  Here is a list of reviews: Kirkus Review , 1 July 2020 Michelle Renee Kidwell, Medium , 25 July 2020 Publisher's Weekly , 14 August 2020 Anna Spydell, Book Page , October 2020 Hamilton Cain, Oprah Magazine , October 2020 Andrew Wilson, Evening Standard , 8 October 2020 Lyndon Gordon, Daily Telegraph , 10 October 2020 J.P. O'Malley, Irish Independent , 11 October 2020 Laura Freeman, The Times , 15 October 2020 Anna Les

Last night I was privileged to have a conversation with Heather Clark, author of the imminently published (in the US) Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath hosted by Washington D.C. independent bookstore Politics and Prose .  The event was recorded and broadcast live on YouTube and is available now for consumption . Hope that you enjoy the hour long program. I really lovely every moment of it. I did not have the chance (or concentration ability) to see the full list of attendees but thank you to all who attended, and, as well, to all who watch it now. Buy the book from Politics and Prose ! One of the topics we discussed was the Harriet Rosenstein archive which is held by Emory University. You may remember in January and February this blog featured a lot of posts about the recently opened collection. Between then and maybe the summer, sometime, Emory was digitizing the audio cassette tapes that came with it. Due to the times, with a lot of places being closed or wit

The following post was drafted in 2018! As October is American Archives Month is seems rather appropriate to dust and thus polish this post off in the middle of it.  The Poetry archive is split between the University of Chicago and the Lilly Library. At the same time, the journal's headquarters in Chicago maintains an archive itself of documents and books that are likely very valuable resources. This post is specifically about the holdings at the Lilly Library, which I received copies of as part of some of the last minute and tangential work I was doing on The Letters of Sylvia Plath . The post from 2013 about the holdings at the University of Chicago can be read here . The Poetry materials at the Lilly Library can be broadly classed into three categories: correspondence, typescripts, and proofs. First up, the correspondence, with brief annotations about the content of each letter: 1. Henry Rago to Sylvia Plath, 27 December 1962: accepting three poems "Eavesdropper&qu

This post is about a new book by author and DJ Dave Haslam:  'My Second Home': Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956 . Sylvia Plath was in Paris during Easter 1956, alone in a hotel near Notre Dame. She’d grown to love the city after spending Christmas there with Richard Sassoon and she’d hoped he‘d be with her for Easter too, but he hadn’t answered her letters. She’d met Ted Hughes a month earlier; Ted was also in her head, and within ten weeks they’d be married. In 'My Second Home': Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956 , Dave Haslam explores this key period in Sylvia Plath’s life. We discover how she filled those Paris days, including dinner with an Italian communist, embracing the idea of drunken afternoon sex with a friend of a friend, sketching in the park, and lying on her yellow bed in an attic room listening to the sound of the rain as she considered decisions and future plans: in her phrase, ‘the fatal dance’ of choices and alternatives. Art Decades is a series of small form

Heather Clark's long-anticipated biography Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath is published as of today in the UK. Order from Amazon or support your local bookshops to get your copy. The book is published by Jonathan Cape. It is a behemoth: 1,152 pages. The ISBN is 978-1787332539. From Amazon.com's description: The highly anticipated new biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art. With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials--including unpublished letters and manuscripts; court, police, and psychiatric records; and new interviews--Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant daughter of Wellesley, Massachusetts who had poetic ambition from a very young age and was an accomplished, published writer of poems and stories even before she became a star English student at Smith College in the early 1950s. Determined not to read Pl

On the 1st of the month , I blogged about an auction taking place on the 8th. Because I am nice. Because I am thoughtful, I wanted to briefly follow-up to report that the copy of Sylvia Plath's The Colossus  (Heinemann, 1960) that was owned by Elizabeth Jennings (and which was accompanied by a first Knopf edition, 1962). The book was in Lot 187 and it sold for a very handsome $3,500 (including buyer's premium). This was $2,000 over the high estimate of $1,500. Bravo. All links accessed 12 October 2020.  

The Sylvia Plath Society will host a Zoom Birthday party on Saturday, 24 October 2020. The event starts at 13:00 New York Time; or 18:00 London time. Registration is required . Four panels comprise the event: I. Plathoween: Occultism, Tarot, and Witches Speakers: Giulia Listo, Julia Bramer, Dorka Tamás Chair: Sarah Corbett II. Plath and Menstruation Speakers: Emily Van Dyne, Maria Rovito, Eilish Mulholland Chair: Nick Smart III. Writing about Plath: Challenges and Pleasures Speakers: Peter K. Steinberg, Gail Crowther, Dave Haslam Chair: Kitty Shaw IV. Plath and Parties: Celebrating Plath, Plath and Celebrations Speakers: Julie Irigaray, Trish Grisafi, Jenna Finan Chair: Dorka Tamás For more information, please visit the program page . All links accessed 8 October 2020.

On Friday, 23 October 2020, at 8 PM, Heather Clark, author of the new biography Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath , and I will have a conversation about her book courtesy of Politics and Prose, a Washington, D.C. based independent bookstore.  The event is free, you just simply have to register .  All links accessed 28 September 2020.

On 8 October 2020, Elizabeth Jennings' copy of Sylvia Plath's The Colossus (Heinemann) will be offered for sale (along with a Knopf, 1962 edition) via Hindman Auctions out of Chicago, Illinois .  It is sale number 759, lot number 187. Starting bid is $500 and it does not take much imagination to realize that is low for a gorgeous looking copy of the book with this poetical association.  And catching up on a missed auction from 7 November 2017, in Lot 197  Doyle sold an extremely rare copy of A Winter Ship , which was published by the Tragara Press in 1960. The This was initialed by Plath "sph" and included a note/inscription. It was sent to Ruth Geissler. The final price including buyer's premium was a very reasonable $6.875. I had the pleasure of seeing this gorgeous item in person when I met Ruth in November 2015. Image sources: Hindman Auctions (top); Doyle (bottom).  All links accessed 28 September 2020.