Recent Sylvia Plath Books

In the last few months there have been a number of books published by and about Sylvia Plath. So, this is just a small post to acknowledge them.

Of course, there was The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath which Faber issued last September. The paperback was on schedule to be published this fall but it has been bumped to April 2026 to coincide with the publication of The Poems of Sylvia Plath edited by Amanda Golden and Karen V. Kukil.

Last August, Carl Rollyson's Sylvia Plath Day By Day Volume 2: 1955-1963 was published by the University of Mississippi Press.

This was followed by his The Making of Sylvia Plath in November 2024 and published by the same press.

Also in November, Heather Clark's Sylvia Plath: A Very Short Introduction was brought out by the Oxford University Press.

Faber issued a new edition of Sylvia Plath's The Bed Book in January with illustrations by Cindy Wume.

And, on 3 July 2025, Faber are issuing "Heritage" editions of her Ariel (selected and ordered by Ted Hughes). This will have two covers: the original cover in a hardback and a more modern interpretation.

I am normally not a fan of fiction about Sylvia Plath, but there are two books that take a different route and they expand upon Esther Greenwood. Crouching Heron: The Life of Esther Greenwood is a fictional biography of Plath's protagonist from The Bell Jar which was published last September. A follow up novel which was released in December 2024, The Papers of Buddy Willard, is a sort of fictional memoir and novel that features an archivist called Greenough Lane who receives a box of papers containing Buddy Willards papers: a memoir on his time with Greenwood, letters, poetry, and other documents, which are all transcribed. Both are by Greenough Lane. To be transparent, I answered many questions from Greenough Lane as she wrote her books, but being involved in this way I can still say that I enjoyed the books objectively.

Lastly, in February I published two books. The first, The Search for Sylvia Plath, is a compilation of some of my essays on Plath. There are some new works in there as well, so I hope that it is something you will enjoy having access to. It is just available at the moment in paperback but I hope to have an ebook edition later this spring.

The second book is Sylvia Plath: A Bibliography. There is a hardback and a paperback for this as well as an ebook (Kindle) version.

If you do purchase my books, then I say sincerely: thank you so much!

All links accessed 4 March 2025.

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