Update from the Archive Day 2: The Plath Family Papers

It is nearly the end of day two here and I am still kind of processing what I saw on day one. This morning, for example, I read the letters from Assia Wevill to Mrs. Plath over coffee before the library opened and I am still not recovered.

One of the items I was most excited to see is in Folder 1 of Box 14, Plath's personal papers. In this folder were sihlouettes dating from 1946 and 1956. The 1956 one was my focus as I remember all the time about Plath's writing about it in her journals. She did so on 30 March 1956 when she was pining for Richard Sassoon, enamoured of Ted Hughes, but spending a lot of time with Tony in advance of meeting up with Gordon!

She wrote: 'Tony and I walked about and looked at paintings until a small man asked if he could cut my silouhette "comme un cadeau", so I stood in the middle of the square in the middle of Montmartre and gazed at the brilliant restaurants in the middle of a gathering crowd which ohed and ahed and which was just what the little man wanted to attract customers: so I got a free silhouette (Journals 561-562).

I always wondered what happened to that. Mrs. Plath has it. Now we do.

Brilliant. I mean, the earrings and bandana as so Plath.

Out of the 55 boxes in the collection, 53 or so of which are available, I was interesting in seeing bits and pieces of about nineteen of them. Box 55 is closed until 2059; and Box 54 is not available due to conservation issues. I hope it can be fixed and prepared for use before too long. Calling for one folder in several instances meant working with a box could have gone quickly. But, you kind of have to look at everything.

I spent ages on Box 47, photographs of Plath, her brother, mother, Ted Hughes, and her children. There were so many that were "new" to me and that is exciting. We can learn much about Plath in photographs of her. The baby and early childhood photos are interesting to see how she developed. The photos from the late 1940s to the early 1950s show Plath blossoming through adolesence into young adulthood. The clothes tell a lot; the faces that were captures also are fascinating. Then of course there are the photos from full adulthood and motherhood. Seeing the photograph of Plath and her daughter Frieda having a "picnic" in Cornwall, referred to her 21 December 1962 letter to her mother was quite moving.

I have not gone through the photos of photos to see how many new-to-us photos there are, but there should be time enough for that in the coming days and weeks. However, a good number of them are stunning and revealing in ways.I will add descriptions and such to the Photographs tab of the Sylvia Plath Archival Documents Hub as soon as I can.

This afternoon I spent some time with Box 15 which are diaries and notebooks or Mrs. Plath. I did so because I know this box is going to be used a decent amount by Catherine Rankovic and I wanted to ensure there was not any competition for it. I am mostly interested in the material from her visits to England because of a lack of information from Plath via the letter, from which we learn so much. There is an appreciable amount of shorthand in the summer 1962 travel diary, so I hope that someday this 'translations', if you will, are available.

I am looking forward to tomorrow and Friday which will see additional Sylvia Plath scholars in attendance in the form of Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Amanda Golden. Yale may never be the same again.

Thank you for reading this update from the archive.

All links accessed 3 December 2025.

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