It is time for HarperCollins to reset and reissue Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. (Faber needs to do this too though for different reasons.) Get rid of the Foreword by Frances McCullough and eradicate the "Biographical Note" by Lois Ames. Let Plath's novel stand on its own and speak for itself. McCullough's piece is fine and interesting, but the 25th anniversary edition is even nearly 30 years old at this point; and Ames' "contribution" has festered with biographical and factual inaccuracies for more than 53 years.
There are a number of textual problems with the US edition to begin with, as I explored in an essay written in 2012. But the Biographical Note by the late Lois Ames is in the cross hairs of my ire today.
Page numbers here refer to the 1971 edition of the book. On page 282 there are two gaffs that that are shameful. The first is the statement that Plath won the Mademoiselle short fiction contest in August 1951. In fact, she won it in June 1952 with publication of her story in August 1952. Shortly thereafter it is stated that Plath was a guest editor in the summer of 1952. She was of course a guest editor in the following June of 1953. How this has never been updated to be accurate is baffling. Another chronological mistake is stating that Harper's bought three of Plath's poems in the summer of 1952 when it was actually the spring of 1953.
Then there is this atrocity on page 287: "It is probable that Sylvia already had a version of The Bell Jar in her trunks when she returned to the States [in 1957], but she was concentrating on poetry and on teaching." Nope.
Later, on page 293, where Ames discusses the breakdown of the marriage, she wrote, "After a vacation in Ireland, Sylvia and Ted decided to separate for a while. The summer had been difficult. She had suffered repeated attacks of flu accompanied by high fever." That is one way of looking at it and framing it...
Lastly, there is this heinous typographical error: "to the person in The Bell Jar, black and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream" to close out the piece on page 296. Two things going on here: Why is The Bell Jar capitalized in this and "black and stopped"? Seriously? (It is correct, mind you, twenty-nine pages earlier on page 267 at the start of Chapter Twenty.)
With access to Mrs. Plath, too, these mistakes are even more unforgivable.
The point here is that this content is exceedingly dated and of course it stands--and should stand--in historical issues of the novel, but in 2024 we know better and we should do better for Plath's legacy.
Ames was in a privileged position in the late 1960s and early 1970s being name Plath's authorized biographer. That this Biographical Note is all she ever published is both laughable and sad. She had access to a number of things that at the time could have provided ample resources for a good product. Her Note prints excerpts from letters to Marica B. Stern (23–24 July 1952 and 3 January 1962) and Anne Davidow Goodman (20 May 1951, 14 April 1959, 12 June 1959, and 27 April 1961), two college friends. Though the letters have been at Smith for a long time, general readers would not get full access to these letters for nearly a half-century.
She also quotes from Plath's high school yearbook, the August 1953 issue of Mademoiselle, Plath's Smith College scrapbook, and "America! America!" (typescript title "The All-Round Image") which was published in Punch in April 1963. She quotes from Ted Hughes' "Notes on the Chronological Order of Sylvia Plath's poems" from TriQuarterly (Fall 1966: 86).
As well, Ames quoted from a letter Plath received on 6 November 1961 from Ruth Hill of the Saxton Trust. In fact, there are many quotes from papers related to the Saxton Grant that Plath won that do not appear to be part of any archive. Smith College holds copies of Plath's May and August 1962 updates. Ames uses these, but also one from February 1962 which is absent from Smith's collections. She also cites letters both from Plath and to her, as well as (possibly) reader's reports or some other kind of paperwork from Plath's 1958 Saxton application for poetry (which was rejected) and her successful 1961 submission for the novel.
Sources are represented by vagueness. The letters Plath wrote to Stern and Goodman are sent to "a friend." Technically that should have been "friends."
Below are other instances where it would be nice to know the specific source of a quote or other texts.
- Page 279: "serious work" [When did SP say this and to whom?]
- Page 282: "Of this period a friend later said: 'It was as if Sylvia couldn't wait for life to come to her.... She rushed out to greet it, to make things happen'." [Which friend, please?]
- Page 286: "Years later she described the book she wanted to write:
'the pressures of the fashion magazine world which seems increasingly superficial and artificial, the return home to the dead summer world of a suburb of Boston. Here the cracks in her [the heroine, Esther Greenwood's] nature which had been held together as it were by the surrounding pressures of New York widen and gape alarmingly. More and more her warped view of the world around her own vacuous domestic life, and that of her neighbors -seems the one right way of looking at things.'" [Is this from the application?] - Pages 287, 289: "Agreement of all three trustees was necessary to make the grant, and one of them, who called the sample poems "beyond reproach," noted that "in looking over Mrs. Hughes' history, I see that she has had valuable awards dropped into her lap during most of her adult life. Perhaps it would not do her any real harm to continue her work for a while as a teacher in a fine college. My impulse is rejection, though I think the quality of her work entitles her to serious consideration." [Who? When?]
- Page 289: "your application aroused more than ordinary interest. The talent-which is marked was not a matter for dispute but rather the nature of the project." [Who wrote this? When?]
- Page 290: On the application Sylvia had asked for money to cover "babysitter or nanny at about $5 a day, 6 days a week for a year, $1,560. Rent of study at about $10 a week: $520 for a year. Total: $2,080....( At present I am living in a two room :flat with my husband and year old baby and having to work part time to meet living expenses.)" [Where is this application?]
- Page 290: "Sylvia replied, "I was very happy to receive your good letter today telling about the Saxton Fellowship. I certainly do plan to go ahead with the novel and the award comes at a particularly helpful time to free me to do so." [Where is this letter?]
- Page 291: "By June 1962 she could tell a friend: 'I'm writing again. Really writing. I'd like you to see some of my new poems.'" [Who is this friend? Sexton maybe?]
- Page 293: "She began to commute to London, where she was 'getting work with the BBC' and hunting for a flat." [Source for this quote?]
- Page 293: "known" [Source for this quote?]
- Page 293: "She told another friend that she thought of The Bell Jar 'as an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past.'" [Who is this friend? Sexton maybe?]
Ames passed away in 2022. Mrs. Plath wrote once that Ames stole manuscripts and photographs and so I wonder when these materials might be made available to researchers through an archive. I have not successfully found, to this date, if there is an archival location for materials related to the Eugene F. Saxton Memorial Trust which was run through Harper & Row. Much of Harper's records at at Columbia University, but after reading through the finding aid and corresponding with archivists, the Saxton records are not there.
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