When J (for Joseph) Mallory Wober first saw Sylvia Plath at a Labour Club meeting, he thought she might have been a town prostitute. He was born, a year to the day, after Warren Plath. After that he lived for a while in Bombay, India, arriving in Liverpool, England from Bombay, India, on 9 December 1945. Wober was a student at King's College, Cambridge, and lived on Peas Hill, at the time he met Plath. We are told at the beginning of these transcripts that most of the interview was not recorded because apparently Wober "forced" Rosenstein to "march" through Hyde Park, Belgravia, and Sloane Square. Exaggerate much? Wober told Rosenstein that Plath's "eyes were most expressive of the intensity of her existence." While in Cambridge, Wober asserts "her time was spent fighting off people who recognized her as a special kind of person." She was "beset" with admirers. Around Plath he felt "illumined" and more alive. He fe...

This morning I continued looking at Sylvia Plath's calendars in Plath mss II, Box 7, Folder 6. The calendar was October 1955 - early October 1956: or, her first year as a Fulbright Scholar at Newnham College, Cambridge University. The majority of the morning was spent comparing undated letters to a former boyfriend, J Mallory Wober, to the minute details Plath recorded in her calendar. The structure of her days at Newnham are meticulously recorded down the hour, including lectures, ADC rehearsals, meetings for tea and sherry, dates, letters written, papers due, food consumed, physical ailments: basically an encyclopedia of autobiography. Mostly likely caught up in the passion of the archive I will say that there is no need to read a biography of Sylvia Plath when one could simply come here (simply is most definitely not the right word since I believe this is one of the harder archives to get to - but it could be worse, no offense Wyoming: but it could be in Wyoming) and spent a we...

Letters to J. Mallory Wober On 5 June 2007 , I posted on the letters to J. Mallory Wober from Sylvia Plath held at King's College, Cambridge University. I've recently acquired photocopies of the letters from the Archives Centre, and have itemized them below. Most are undated, but the letters are in an approximate chronological order. There are 25 letters, plus three additional pieces - a concert program, an admission ticket, and a telegram. Sylvia Plath met J. Mallory Wober in the fall of 1955 early in her matriculation at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Though Plath was still somewhat involved with Richard Sassoon that fall, she and Wober dated briefly that fall and early into the winter of 1956. In addition to Wober and Sassoon, Plath dated a few other men casually before she met Ted Hughes on 25 February 1956. The letters listed below are held at the Archives Centre, King's College, University of Cambridge, in England. The letters show Plath being witty,...