Online Class Event - Everything you ever wanted to know about Sylvia Plath (but were afraid to ask) Get your new year off to a Plath-filled start with scholar and Plath aficionado, Dr Maeve O'Brien who is running a six-week online course all about Sylvia Plath, starting 13th January 2022! Maeve's credentials speak for themselves – she wrote her PhD (2017) on Plath, has published many articles on this subject and is also co-editor of the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath. But really - Maeve is also just a massive fangirl who loves the work of Plath and has had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with her words, visit her archives and see the places she's lived. This course is borne out of a love for Sylvia Plath and Maeve's belief in feminist community learning – you do not need to have an academic knowledge of Sylvia Plath: you just have to have an interest and show up! Join a global classroom and meet people from all over the world who want to lea...

The back-to-back auctions in June and July hosted by, respectively, Bonhams and Sotheby's , of items belonging to Frieda Hughes, and formerly belonging to either her mother Sylvia Plath, or father, Ted Hughes, were the focal points of this year in Sylvia Plath. The auctions featured very different items for each sale. The first was largely books published after Plath's death, both commercial books as well as remaining stock of limited editions. However there were some exceptions to that as there were items definitely owned by Plath in her lifetime. The ability to watch the auction live---and to bid---was something that is a truly magical experience. Nerve-wracking, too. The results of the Bonhams auction can be revisited here . From my point of view, the 24 total copies split between three lots of A Winter Ship , published by the Tragara Press in 1960, were the highlight here. (A 25th copy sold earlier this month via Bonhams, which was inadvertently left out of the June auctio...

Heritage Auctions has sold a copy of Sylvia Plath's A Winter Ship (Tragara Press, 1960). This just 8 days following Bonhams selling one. But there is a difference. While the Bonhams copy was a 25th originating from Plath and her Estate, Heritage sold one of the 22 copies from the very large lot ( Lot 141 ) of copies that sold at Bonhams last June. That sentence is confusing! The winner of that big June lot appears to be Nate D Sanders. In addition to selling this one via Heritage, he is offering two copies on eBay for $15,000 each. Copy 1 is here  and  Copy 2 is here . Sanders formerly had a copy of the publication on his website for $6,000 . Sanders was active in the 2018 Bonhams auction, too.   Lot 45118 of the Heritage Auction, which closed yesterday, the 9th, sold for $3,750 (including buyer's premium). The wrappers for all these copies have different marbled patterns, which makes each one in its own way a rather unique item. There appear to have been a total o...

On 1 December 2021, Bonhams in Knightsbridge sold a twenty-fifth unique copy of Sylvia Plath's A Winter Ship (1960) in Lot 159 their Fine Books & Manuscripts sale (26775). The final sale price was £2,167 (US$ 2,891) inc. premium, which for this edition may be an auction record. Earlier in the year, in June, an individual copy sold for £1,402 . So, a considerable amount more of money was needed this time around to win the limited edition pamphlet produced by Alan Anderson of the Tragara Press.  All links accessed 1 December 2021.

Assia Wevill read Sylvia Plath's writings in the weeks and months and years after Plath's death on 11 February 1963. Wevill's recently published Collected Writings reveals as much, as well as her comments to Nathaniel Tarn which he faithfully recorded and are held by Stanford University. On 12 March 1963, Wevill met Tarn who noted the following: "T.H. wants to get her poems out as quickly as possible. There is also a question of a novel. Under the name of Victoria Lucas she had brought out an autobiographical novel “The Bell Jar”. The 2nd novel includes the Wevills, under the name of the Goof-Hoppers; and shocked Assia by its portrait of David who is presented as detestable & contemptible. A. is of course the icy barren woman. In the novel, apart from SP who is full of poems, kicks & kids, there are only saints and miserable sinners. She hopes TH will destroy this." Around this time, Ted Hughes gave David Machin, Plath's new editor at Heinemann, permi...