Update from the Archive Day 1: The Plath Family Papers

Snow, sleet, and rain greeted me today on my drive to New Haven. I have been to this city only one time before, about 20 or so years ago on a day trip to see the Plath Sites. Or, the Richard Norton sites, such as my 2001 or 2002 self knew. I was not impressed. Anyway, the atrocious weather may have been a blessing as the George Washington Bridge was sans traffic. As was every other road I travelled to get here until I got here. The Merritt Parkway--a road which Sylvia Plath herself took on excursions to Manhattan--was fine. A few back-ups on hills, because apparently driving uphill in Connecticut is just as hard as running up them. The last few miles seemed to take the most amount of time. Ah---anticipation.

The Beienecke Library recently opened the Plath Family Papers. Word or mouth was that there was nothing shocking or revolutionary in them, but that is not really what I am looking for as I look through them. Maybe I do not even know what it is I am looking for, but whatever I find I am grateful for.

The first materials I worked with were the letters from Sylvia Plath to various recipients in Box 1. There are a bunch of letters that were not made available to us for The Letters of Sylvia Plath; and I look forward to trying to see that they are published along with the thirty-odd letters I have gathered since 2019 when the paperbacks were issued in the United Kingdom.

The second thing I worked with was the letters from Assia Wevill to Mrs. Plath. I sent copies off to my good friend and colleague Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick immediately. The marvel of modern archival research. She read them and her reactions to them made me tear up a bit. And I cannot even blame allergies.

I had about two or so hours with the first boxes that I called for and it was strange, weird, nice, awesome, and interesting, to say to least to work with these materials. It is the first Plath-centric archival trip I have had since 2022. I am, honestly, worried about my stamina. Can I survive three full days of this from Wednesday through Friday? Well, I will try. And if and when I get cranky there is chocolate and coffee nearby, I am sure.

I have written a fictional biography of Esther Greenwood and I hope it is something you might find interesting

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My focus today was just taking pictures. I can read everything in the coming weeks of dark nights and short days. In three hours I took 407 images. Glory!

It has long been a dream to visit the Beinecke. To get to spend 3+ days here with the Plath Family papers is a true honor. I look forward to discussing some of what I see here with in via the blog in the next few days.

All links accessed 2 December 2025.

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...

Some final photographs of Sylvia Plath

Susan O'Neill-Roe took a series of photographs of Sylvia Plath and her children from October to late November (or maybe early December) 1962 while she was a day nanny/mother's help at Court Green. From nearby Belstone , it was a short drive to North Tawton and the aid she provided enabled Plath to complete the masterful October and November poems and also to make day or overnight trips to London for poetry business and other business. Some of O'Neill-Roe's photographs are well-known. However, a cache of photographs formed a part of the papers of failed biographer Harriet Rosenstein. They were sold separately from the rest of her papers that went to Emory. I was fortunate enough to see low resolution scans of them a while back so please note these are being posted today as mere reference quality images. There are two series here. The first of the children with Plath dressed in red and black. (This should be referred to in the future, please, as Plath's Stendhal-c...

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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