In March, the Beinecke Library opened the recently processed collection of the Lois Ames Collection of Sylvia Plath. The finding aid is online here, and there is a convenient option to make a PDF which is, in some ways, easier to read.
In my earlier post last year about the acquisition, as well as in this post from 2023, I commented on a comment made by Mrs Plath about how Ames "stole both materials (manuscripts of Sylvia's) and snapshots from me." So I was fascinated to work with the papers on 23 and 24 March 2026 to see if I could make sense of Mrs Plath's claim, and, as well, see the materials that represent the start of the industry of Sylvia Plath.
What I encountered, though, was an enormous absence.
There are two boxes of correspondence, most of which feels like it is drafts of letters Ames wrote as well as some carbons of letters sent. There are incoming letters, but the majority of these are from Ted Hughes, Mrs Plath, Olwyn Hughes, and Harper & Row, being, likely, the most important. Ames wrote incessantly about the level and depth of her research, her inquiries, and her progress in assembling material from people who knew Plath in the years when memories may have been the most fresh. But where is it? It is not here in document form.
The most interesting folder of correspondence, which is filled with delicious drama and tension, belongs to Harper & Row. Ames signed her contract to write Plath's biography in 1971 and the manuscript was due in December 1974. By 1971, Ames had been "collecting" (I must use quotes here) information on Plath since 1965, though possibly slightly earlier, perhaps. But there is little to nothing to show for those years. Olwyn Hughes wrote, around the time the contract was signed, "It would be a great pity to drag out the writing of the biography so long that the great flood of interest dissipates as it surely will sooner or later" OH to LA, 3 November 1971. In spite of the Hughes' efforts, interest has never waned.
By 1979, Harper & Row started sending Ames letters asking for their $7,500 advance to be returned because they were going to terminate the agreement due to her utter failure to produce the manuscript. Ted Hughes also had to return his advance of $2,500. One of the Harper & Row letters even suggests that Ames give to Hughes materials she assembled over the years -- so if this did happen, then that might explain the lack of biographical material on Plath. Hughes himself expressed concern over the mass "confidential" information he provided.
Anyway, Ames did not reply to several letters which got more strongly worded and more frustrated and eventually Harper even had a summons drawn up. Ames eventually replied with an laundry list of ailments and issues and excuses with promises made and promises broken (and more excuses made expressing her concerns over funds -- which included a trip to China) over the next five years before things were finally paid back in full and the awful agreement was terminated, just months before the first Terminator movie came out.
There were clearly stolen goods. There were no manuscripts of Plath's. There are a few photocopies of things, but nothing original, in terms of manuscripts (by this I think of creative writing though I am aware that it could mean almost anything on paper, including typewritten documents). There is Plath's German 12 Notebook from a course she took at Smith in 1954-1955, her senior year.
Box 6 is a small box of photographs. Several were ... kept. The one of Plath in a high school play had Wilbury Crockett's name and address on it; a class photo had Jane Truslow Davison's name on it. Another one had handwriting on it of either Marcia Brown or Marcia Brown's mother. There is one photograph of Frieda Hughes with Plath's handwriting on the back. Hughes is seated in a chair holding two books, and is dated Christmas 1961. The other photograph is of Plath holding Nicholas Hughes on a bed in a room with stark white walls. It is annotated on the back by Aurelia Plath that it was taken on 11 December 1962 at Court Green. However, we know Plath moved to London on 10 December 1962: so it's unclear whether Susan O'Neill-Roe took the photo in Court Green on the 10th of December or before; of it is was indeed taken on 11 December inside of 23 Fitzroy Road. I sure people could debate this; friendships might even cease.
Box 3 was my first entry point into the collection because it has a letter from Plath to a man called Herbert Hitchen and this letter was also referred to in my October 2025 post linked above. Accompanying the letter, though it dates to a couple of months later, is a full sheet from the Christian Science Monitor of Plath's "A Walk to Withens". As well, a clipping of "Mosaics An Afternoon of DIscovery" also from Christian Science Monitor later that year.
I next moved on to Box 5 which had information on Plath's Saxton grant. When I read and discussed Ames's awful "Biographical Note" to The Bell Jar in 2024, I highlighted much of what I find wrong with it which largely had to do with lack of citations and bad facts. This Saxton material was also, clearly, stolen (or maybe permanently borrowed, to be softer about it?) The two scenarios I can think of are the Frances McCullough---who worked at Harper & Row at the time---took it and loaned it to Ames who kept it. Or, Ames got access to work with the papers in New York and took it. Either way: this solves a mystery. In addition to her 1958 and 1961 applications, there are six new letters from Plath as well as an additional "Progress Report" on The Bell Jar. The Saxton folder should have the first progress report for chapters 1 through 4, but doesn't; it does have Progress Report two, covering chapters 5 through 8. (Smith College has the May (Chapters 9 through 12) and August Chapters 13 through 16). The folder also has the passport photograph of Plath (that's on the US edition of volume 2 of The Letters, and what I like about this is that it's stamped on the back: "JUL 2 1959" and was taken at Avery Studios, 29 Scollay Square, Boston (Flickr).
In the Saxton folder is a letter from 23 January 1967 that McCullough sent to Gloria Steinem in which she writes on The Bell Jar: "It's a perfectly awful novel and completely fascinating at the same time; she seems to have extended to their logical limits all the horrible problems the young have with this world -- she went ahead and had the breakdown, attempted the suicide, wrote the terrible novel we all wanted to write but didn't because we all knew it would turn out to be just as terrible as THE BELL JAR." This had steam coming out of my pores. A couple of years before this, on 13 August 1965, Ames wrote to Anne Sexton that she had "Stayed up until 300 --- got to bed after midnight -- reading The Bell Jar ... It's a poor book..."
There are a half dozen notebooks that Ames kept, 98.5% of which are empty. There are a couple of dozen index cards with various pieces of information on them; hardly anything worth writing about and even saying that is too much, which I am only making worse by continuing the sentence but I really want you to experience the same suffering I did in looking through them. There may be an equal number of completely blank notecards. In fact, the following photograph seems to sum up the Lois Ames Collection of Sylvia Plath:
Indeed, the word that largely defines these papers, for which there are some gems, is substanceless. (Please note I did not work with boxes 9 through 13 because they either did not interest me or were not available. So it might be that the unavailable materials change my mind about the collection.) The absence of early information on Plath was frustrating, especially compared to what Harriet Rosenstein was able to obtain in her years of working on her own failed book. Both Rosenstein and Ames, for whatever reason, opted to hoard information selfishly and did precious little to aid scholars and researchers for a half-century, from approximately 1970 to 2020.
P.S. There are several letters from Anne Sexton to Ames that will likely be new to people.
All links accessed 23-30 March 2026.