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...

The University of Huddersfield bolstered its burgeoning archival collections with its recent acquisition of the "Mark Hinchliffe Ted Hughes Collection." It features also materials created by, owned by, etc. of Sylvia Plath, Leonard Baskin, Assia Wevill, and Nicholas Hughes, to name a few prominent people.  A preliminary cataloging of the papers was released recently and is visible online here . Steve Ely comments the collection "comprises over 170 items, including signed first editions of dozens of Hughes’ trade, limited-edition and fine-press publications; original letters written by Hughes and his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath; signed and annotated books from Hughes’s personal collection; and, some absolutely unique items: a very fine ceramic jaguar sculpted by Hughes in 1967, the only intact example anywhere in the world of Hughes’s work in the plastic arts." ( Press Release ) Item 3, a ceramic jaguar with the letter 'A' on it, made the news in 2011 ....

It appears that Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill both were photographed with Royal typewriters...  Assia Wevill's was likely the 1948 Royal Quiet Deluxe ; and Plath's is the 1954 Royal HH . Plath's Royal typewriter is now held by Smith. Here is a video of that machine in action . And, you can read more about Royal typewriters here, if interested. All links accessed 1 May 2022. If you benefited from this post or any content on the Sylvia Plath Info Blog, my website for Sylvia Plath ( A celebration, this is ), and @sylviaplathinfo on Twitter, then please consider sending me a tip via PayPal . Thank you for at least considering! All funds will be put towards my Sylvia Plath research.

On 22 February, Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and I received word that our recently edited and published book The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill , published by the LSU Press, won the Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited book in Feminist Studies in Popular and American Culture issued by the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association . The formal announcement was made yesterday and Julie and I have been invited to the PCA's virtual conference in April. Wow. Just wow. And it being announced intentionally or not on the anniversary of the deaths of Assia and Shura Wevill was meaningful. From her Penguin Random House authors page, "Susan H. Koppelman is a feminist literary historian and anthologist. Her credits include T wo Friends and Other 19th-Century American Lesbian Stories , Between Mothers and Daughters , The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe , and The Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories ." If you have not done...

Please join Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and me at an event tomorrow, Thursday the 6th of January 2022, hosted by our publisher, the LSU Press, on our recent publication The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill . Registration information is here . It will be recorded, but we would love for you to witness our talk live. The starting time is 2 pm Central US time (12 noon Pacific time/3 PM Eastern US time/8 PM London time/9 PM Dortmund time). Buy the book! Please! Looking forward to seeing you then! All links accessed 28 December 2021.

The back-to-back auctions in June and July hosted by, respectively, Bonhams and Sotheby's , of items belonging to Frieda Hughes, and formerly belonging to either her mother Sylvia Plath, or father, Ted Hughes, were the focal points of this year in Sylvia Plath. The auctions featured very different items for each sale. The first was largely books published after Plath's death, both commercial books as well as remaining stock of limited editions. However there were some exceptions to that as there were items definitely owned by Plath in her lifetime. The ability to watch the auction live---and to bid---was something that is a truly magical experience. Nerve-wracking, too. The results of the Bonhams auction can be revisited here . From my point of view, the 24 total copies split between three lots of A Winter Ship , published by the Tragara Press in 1960, were the highlight here. (A 25th copy sold earlier this month via Bonhams, which was inadvertently left out of the June auctio...

Assia Wevill read Sylvia Plath's writings in the weeks and months and years after Plath's death on 11 February 1963. Wevill's recently published Collected Writings reveals as much, as well as her comments to Nathaniel Tarn which he faithfully recorded and are held by Stanford University. On 12 March 1963, Wevill met Tarn who noted the following: "T.H. wants to get her poems out as quickly as possible. There is also a question of a novel. Under the name of Victoria Lucas she had brought out an autobiographical novel “The Bell Jar”. The 2nd novel includes the Wevills, under the name of the Goof-Hoppers; and shocked Assia by its portrait of David who is presented as detestable & contemptible. A. is of course the icy barren woman. In the novel, apart from SP who is full of poems, kicks & kids, there are only saints and miserable sinners. She hopes TH will destroy this." Around this time, Ted Hughes gave David Machin, Plath's new editor at Heinemann, permi...

Published today by the LSU Press is The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill , co-edited by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg. ISBN: 9780807171356. The book is available directly from the  LSU website , and, as well, via  Amazon  and other book websites. Please consider buying from local, independent bookstores. If you live outside of the US you can order it from Book Depository or from the press directly. Thank you for considering buying our book. Please join us this Saturday for a Zoom book launch! 1 p.m. New York time. The description of the book: " The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill marks a significant development in literary recovery efforts related to Assia Wevill (1927–1969), who remains a critically important figure in the life and work of the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Sylvia Plath and the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. Editors Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg located over 150 texts authored by Assia Wevill and curated them in...

Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and I would like to invite any and all interested in our book, The   Collected Writings of Assia Wevill, to join us on Zoom for a celebratory book launch. We plan to each read a letter, a journal entry, a poem, and discuss a bit why the book was important to us to bring out. Time permitting we can field some questions.  Date: Saturday, 13 November 2021 Time: 1 pm, Eastern US time Duration: 30-45 minutes Click here to register!!    Remember to use discount code 04GIFT when you order direct from the LSU Press .  All links accessed 30 October and 1 November 2021.

The first half of 2021 is in the rear view mirror. Sylvia Plath featured in every day for me, and maybe for you. In April and May, in the US and in the UK, respectively, readers were treated to the publication of Three-Martini Afternoons: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton ( publisher's website ). A  new edition  of Plath's poems is in the works for a 2024(ish) publication with Faber and Faber in London. Heather Clark's massive, commendable Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath was shortlisted for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. This is a phenomenal accomplishment and recognition for Clark's tome ( publisher's website ). Congratulations, Heather. Red Comet is a remarkable achievement. Paulina Bren published a biography of The Barbizon Hotel ( publisher's website ). Plath features a little bit in it, I am told. On  14 June, Janet Malcolm , author of The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes , passed away. Here and there I was worki...

As an author and an editor, there are very few things that can be more exciting to providing an update about a forthcoming publication. One that has been in the works since the spring of 2018. When Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick asked me to work on a project, then called, The Selected Writings of Assia Wevill I knew immediately I wanted to do it. Even, as it was, on the heels of polishing off the second volume of The Letters of Sylvia Plath . As the project developed, it was decided that the title needed to be updated to The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill .  One of the biggest and happiest updates I can think of concerns the cover and as such it is with pleasure and pride that we present to you the cover image designed by the creative minds at the LSU Press, our publisher. We still have miles to go before the book is out. But we can say that the official publication date is 10 November 2021. Pre-order the hardback here! Or the Kindle here! Thank you!! All links accessed 20 April 2...

Today Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and I are very proud to annouce that we submitted our copyedited text back to LSU Press for our forthcoming book, The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill . More news and updates about the book as it happens. The next step is to have the book typeset and to do the indexing. So, lots of fun to be had. There is no news on the cover yet but I hope to share it here when it is available. Thank you all sincerely for your interest this the volume!! In January, I put the finishing touches on an essay that should be included in the  Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath , titled "'They will come asking for our letters': Editing The Letters of Sylvia Plath." It was adapted and enlarged from my keynote talk given at the "Sylvia Plath: Letters, Words and Fragments" conference held at Ulster University, 10-11 November 2017. The various contributors are awaiting their contracts, so more news on this once they have been issued. However, in additi...

  Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and I are very happy to say we submitted our manuscript for The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill  to the published, LSU Press, last Monday, 26 October. We are very excited to see it in their hands.  The manuscript, including more than twenty photographs and scans of documents we will use for illustrations, stretches to 298 pages. In it, you will read Assia Wevill's life and experiences in her own words with contextual annotations that bring color and information to her texts. We began this project with a vision to assemble Selected Writings back in the spring of 2018 and it is so thrilling to see it to this point, where we of necessity had to elevate it to something as comprehensive as a Collected Writings .  It was an honor and a privilege to work on this project---Julie's third book; my fifth book (the sixth is done, nearly, too)---with Julie, and our contacts at the Press have been marvelous. Thank you, Julie! And, as well, thank you ...

So what did you think of Sylvia Plath in 2019? It seemed to be a year dominated by Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom , the short story published in the UK and the US in January and then which started appearing in translations. It is wonderful a newly published short story could kind of captivate its readers across the globe, which I think is a great sign that Plath--and her work--is in demand. As in the past, this is a look back at the year as I lived it. It seems I spent most of January publicizing the story on the blog, as well as the real Mary Ventura, who was a friend of Plath's in Wellesley in the mid-to-late 1940s. I spent most of the month of January, too, packing up my belongings and changing jobs and states. Sadly I still do not feel settled but, well, I will get there eventually. It is weird not being in Plath's backyard any longer after twenty years… But, you probably do not want to read my moaning, you want to read about Plath. At any rate, I think Mary Ve...

The LSU Press publishes today Reclaiming Assia Wevill: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Literary Imagination by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick. From the description: Reclaiming Assia Wevill: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Literary Imagination reconsiders cultural representations of Assia Wevill (1927–1969), according her a more significant position than a femme fatale or scapegoat for marital discord and suicide in the lives and works of two major twentieth-century poets. Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick’s innovative study combines feminist recovery work with discussions of the power and gendered dynamics that shape literary history. She focuses on how Wevill figures into poems by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, showing that they often portrayed her in harsh, conflicted, even demeaning terms. Their representations of Wevill established condemnatory narratives that were perpetuated by subsequent critics and biographers and in works of popular culture. In Plath’s literary treatments, Goo...