Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural by Dorka Tamás

Earlier this year, Cambridge University Press released the first monograph for Dorka Tamás, whom you likely know from social media, conferences and symposia, and the Sylvia Plath Society. Dorka's book, Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural, is available in hardback as well as digitally via the CUP website.

The book description reads, "Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural brings a fresh and interdisciplinary perspective to the reading of Plath. Following recently published new material, this book offers a novel approach to the re-examination and celebration of supernatural themes in Plath's writings. It expands Plath studies by establishing Plath's creative and intellectual interests in early modern literature about witches and demonology, knowledge of the legacies of the Salem witch trials during McCarthyism, and her depth of understanding of the complex relationship between gender and magical powers. The book also demonstrates how Plath and her contemporaries responded to post-war American and British politics through employing and repurposing supernatural concepts while engaging with popular culture, atomic warfare, and colonialism. This book provides a systematic overview of Plath's materials, from draft manuscripts to The Bell Jar, and a unique analysis of post-war literature and culture through the lens of the supernatural."

Personally and selfishly I felt extreme pride to see that Dorka made so much use of The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath as well as The Letters of Sylvia Plath. I admire greatly as well the use she made of Plath's poems on the cusp of the recent Poems of Sylvia Plath. And so I wonder if she and the Press will offer a revised edition sometime in the future? She also made use of books in Plath's personal library, and I particularly liked her mentioned Dostoevsky's The Possessed (Modern Library edition), which Plath was photographed holding on circa 28 March 1954.

Tamás' writing is crystal clear and the structure and flow of the book builds a solid narrative arc. Her inspection of Plath's writings and the themes of witches and the supernatural is well argued and well documented. She made brilliant use of archival materials, such as poetry drafts, in addition to a slew of published primary resources. This is a valuable contribution to Sylvia Plath studies; especially so because it is the first full length treatment on the subject.

All links accessed: 21 May 2026

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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