Skip to main content

Publications

 Books

The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill. Edited by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2021.

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume 2: 1956-1963. Edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil. London: Faber, 2019 (paperback).

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume 1: 1940-1956. Edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil. London: Faber, 2019 (paperback).

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume 2: 1956-1963. Edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil. London: Faber; New York: HarperCollins, 2018.

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume 1: 1940-1956. Edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil. London: Faber; New York: HarperCollins, 2017.

These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath. Gail Crowther and Peter K. Steinberg. Stroud, Eng.: Fonthill Media, 2017.

Sylvia Plath. Great Writers series. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004.





Introductions and Forewords

"Foreword." Breaking Down Plath. Patricia Grisafi. Hoboken, N.J.: Jossey-Bass, 2022.

"Introduction." Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year's Turning. Elizabeth Sigmund and Gail Crowther. Stroud, Eng.: Fonthill Media, 2014.

"Introduction." The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath. London: The British Library, 2010.


Selected articles available online

The Story Behind Sylvia Plath's Letters (2018)


These Ghostly Archives 5: Reanimating the Past (with Gail Crowther) (2013)

Textual Variations in The Bell Jar Publications (2012)

These Ghostly Archives 4: Looking for New England (with Gail Crowther) (2012) 

These Ghostly Archives 3 (with Gail Crowther) (2011) 

A Perfectly Beautiful Time: Sylvia Plath at Camp Helen Storrow (2011)

This is a Celebration: A Festschrift for The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2010)

"They Had to Call and Call": The Search for Sylvia Plath (2010)

These Ghostly Archives, Redux (with Gail Crowther) (2010)

These Ghostly Archives (with Gail Crowther) (2009)

"I Should Be Loving This": Sylvia Plath's "The Perfect Place" and The Bell Jar (2008)

See more publications on A celebration, this is.


Interviews

"There Are Almost No Obituaries for Sylvia Plath" by Ashley Fetters. The Atlantic. 11 February 2013.

"FBI files on Sylvia Plath's father shed new light on poet" by Dalya Alberge. The Guardian. 17 August 2012.

"Sylvia Plath's Three Women to be staged in London" by Alison Flood. The Guardian. 3 December 2008.

"Banking on his passion for Plath" by Melissa Davis Haller. UMW Today. Spring 2005.

Popular posts from this blog

The passing of Sylvia Plath's family and friends

The recent news that Sylvia Plath's brother, Warren Joseph Plath, passed away was sad news to receive. I am grateful to JulieMcC for alerting me via Twitter.  One of the things I am trying to keep track of is when family and friends of Plath's pass away so that we can update their life dates in footnotes to The Letters of Sylvia Plath . You would not be incorrect to believe that one should spend their time in better ways, but keeping up-to-date on this is, I feel, important.  So after I learned of Warren Plath's passing, I went through both volumes of the Letters and searched for obituaries and death notices for anyone with an open-ended life span. Some of the people even passed away before 2017 when Volume 1 came out, but I either missed them or did not search deep enough or, in fact, the information may not have been as readily accessible as it is now. So here is a list of those who have passed away along with links to pages about their lives. May they all rest in pe
Read more

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de
Read more

(Not) Sylvia Plath's Tomato Soup Spice Cake

In 2017, Eva gave me a tomato soup cake that she made (frosting on the side and as I have no pride left I can admit that I ate what did not make it onto the cake directly out of the jar with a spoon. It was that good).  Plath's tomato soup spice cake is fairly legendary. Plath herself mentions it just once in her letters (15 September 1961, from Court Green;  Letters,  Vol. II , p. 649, Amazon ) and no times, that I could find, in her journals. Plath did make several references to it in her 1962 Letts tablet. On 22, 25, and 26 February and 10 May. The cake has a life of its own on the internet, frequently being written about, but always using someone else's recipe. Until now. Lot 45 of Frieda Hughes' auction of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes items includes some recipe cards and a rolling pin. One of the recipes is "her" Tomato Soup Spice Cake. I say "her", in quotes, but really the recipe is not Sylvia Plath's at all. Sotheby's did not include the
Read more