Sylvia Plath's Uncle Frank's House

As Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes wended their way back to Massachusetts from their counter-clockwise trip across the continent of North America, one of their final stops before reaching Wellesley was to visit Uncle Frank and Aunt Louise Bowman Schober.

After they married in Winthrop in June 1942, the Schobers found themselves in Ohio for a spell before returning east. They settled in the university town of Villanova, outside of Philadelphia. The wedding photograph, right, was taken in front of the Bowman house at 27 Thornton Street, Winthrop.

Plath and Hughes had traveled somewhat hurriedly through the south after they stayed a few days with her Aunt Frieda Heinrichs, zooming through New Mexico (Carlsbad Caverns), Texas, Louisiana (New Orleans), Mississippi, Tennessee (Sewanee), Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania (Villanova). Please do read the Volume II of the Letters of Sylvia Plath as well as David Trinidad's wonderful essay, "On the Road with Sylvia and Ted." Plath and Hughes were in Pennsylvania circa 25-27 August 1959.

On a road trip earlier this year to visit some family, I had the opportunity to deviate, without too much inconvenience, to see the house that they visited. It sits in a nice suburban area not too far from Route 476, which was not there in 1959.

The house is at 632 Spruce Lane, according to Plath's address book which is housed at Smith College.

The house was likely modified and enlarged from when Plath & Hughes saw it.

All links accessed 7 August 2021.

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'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...

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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