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Sylvia Plath at Mid-Year 2022


While not a full year in review, this blog post looks back from January to yesterday to summarize what went on in the world of Sylvia Plath as I lived it. My own experiences are limited and not exhaustive, but I hope this summary is in some way useful. There were two books to come out so far: Patricia Grisafi's Breaking Down Plath in February and The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath in April co-edited by Anita Helle, Amanda Golden, and Maeve O'Brien. 


There have been, also, two conferences on Plath this year already. The Sylvia Plath Society hosted a Zoom conference in March (read my text here; watch a video here) and Emily Van Duyne pulled off a hybrid event in May (read my text here). There is a Sylvia Plath Literary Festival taking place this coming October in Hebden Bridge that will also, likely be hybrid, which is being organized by Sarah Corbett and Ian Humphreys. Look to their Twitter accounts for all the lastest information. 

There was a major archive acquired by the University of Huddersfield collected by Mark Hinchliffe. Particularly strong in Ted Hughes materials, there are Sylvia Plath, Assia Wevill, and others represented in the collection.   

A couple of blog posts here highlighted other new Plath archival materials. Eva Stenskar and I did a little research into Siv Arb to highlight two letters and a photograph and a bookseller is offering for sale a previously unknown photograph of Plath and Hughes in their Boston apartment with a letter from Plath to Hughes' parents on the verso. 

In January, there was a blog post about the "goggle-eyed headlines" Esther Greenwood writes about seeing in New York about the Rosenberg's execution. Using access to newspapers.com, I was able to find such examples as Plath herself likely saw all around town.

February saw a rather long post about Plath's calendars. The few that are held by the Lilly Library and the one held by Smith are so valuable to those of us who obsess over Plath's day-to-day and it is tantalyzing to think that there were others (definitely) but that their whereabouts at this time are unknown. There was also a post about Hamish Stewart, the guy that Plath went to the St. Botolph's Review party with on 25 February 1956. I had an email from one of Stewart's friends recently that confirmed this was in fact the right person.

A number of posts recently were inspired by re-reading last year Plath's Journals. In March, I happily highlighted an article I published in The Book Collector about the 1960 limited edition printing of Plath's A Winter Ship. This is an item that I have coveted for years and seeing so many in June 2021's Bonham's auction proved instrumental in writing this article. In February, Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and I learned that our LSU Press book The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill was awarded the Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited book in Feminist Studies in Popular and American Culture issued by the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. issued by the Pop Culture Association. Sitting on the news until it was announced in March was difficult. 

For April Fool's Day this year I did two posts. One of which (getting a fake tattoo) was far more popular, it seems, than the one in which I am rather snarky.  Also in April I made a rather spontaneous visit to the Lilly Library (had frequent flyer miles I had to use or lose). I was out of physical archival research shape, so found my brief three days exhausting but worthwhile in aiding in the completion of a multi-year project to be published next year. Read about Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3! A few other blog posts grew out of that trip so feel free to browse the Blog Archive to see those. 


In May and June I tried to clear through a backlog of drafted posts; some new and some rather old (like ten years old). In June, too, an obituary ran for Richard Norton, Plath's former boyfriend. Rest in Peace.  Please do visit the blog archive to click through those as maybe some of the content will be news to you!

Looking forward to the second half of the year, Faber is reissuing Sylvia Plath: Drawings in September and also that month HarperPerennial is reissuing Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Faber is also published an illustrated edition of The Bell Jar in October. This is bibliographically on the heels of an illustrated edition published in March by the Folio Society.

Please make sure to check back in on the Sylvia Plath Info Blog in the first days of July for some news. 

If you benefited from this post or any content on the Sylvia Plath Info Blog, my website for Sylvia Plath (A celebration, this is), and @sylviaplathinfo on Twitter, then please consider sending me a tip via PayPal. Thank you for at least considering!

All links accessed 6 and 26 June 2022.

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