In the Spring 2026 catalog of new books issued by Faber , they are showing a cover design for the highly anticipated volume of The Poems of Sylvia Plath  edited by Amanda Golden and Karen V. Kukil. See page 46 for more details. Faber is releasing the paperback version of The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath  edited by me (aka Peter K. Steinberg) along with new editions of The Bell Jar  (page 26) and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (page 26). The catalog text reads:  The definitive edition of Plath’s poetry for readers, scholars and students. Sylvia Plath’s first Collected Poems was published in 1981. This new volume draws on decades of research and almost doubles the content of that previous edition. The book is in two parts. It begins with the poems Plath composed in the last ten years of her life and on which her reputation is founded, and follows with those poems written in childhood and through her student years. In both sections the editors date, correct a...

Earlier this spring at the Lilly Library I spent some time with Sylvia Plath's short story "The Fifteen Dollar Eagle" which is held in the Plath mss collection. This is the collection of papers Plath herself selected for selling to the bookseller Ifan Kyrle Fletcher who was buying manuscripts for the Lilly.  I do not know much about religion. Any of them. But I was struck curious by the following description early on in the story: And then I forgot about it until recently reading Helena by Evelyn Waugh, which in part is set in Jerusalem and in the environs specifically of Mount Cavalry. Plath's description is so real , in a sense, I got to wondering if this was actually something she saw in a Scollay Square tattoo shop, of which there were many. In conducting some Google searches last Friday evening, I found an image from 1897 of a man called Frank de Burgh, whose entire back is covered in tattoos and the image depicted rings pretty close to true to Plath's descr...

On 6 September 2022, Harper Perennial will issue a new paperback edition of Sylvia Plath's  Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts,  and the cover was recently revealed: The book price is a reasonable $10. The ISBN is 978-0063269620. 400 pages. You can order now via Amazon , or if you prefer to buy directly from the publisher Harper Perennial , you can do so, too. All links accessed 25 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!

The Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes Bonhams auction in March is the gift that keeps on giving, it seems. Because nearly one-quarter of all the lots were purchased jointly between two booksellers, dozens of items are appearing now individually for sale. This is how I procured two additional possessions of Frieda Hughes' in addition to Plath's fishing rod . In July I posted about the presentation copy of Alan C. Jenkins's White Horse, Black Bull , acquired from Modern First Editions. This blog post is about the third, and perhaps final, item from the auction which I have purchased. I have always had an interest in uncorrected proofs of Plath's books. They represent a pre-first edition state, were printed in extremely limited quantities, and often serve as a bridge state between manuscript and first edition. Peter Harrington Books of London acquired Lot 377 which was comprised of thirteen total books. Eleven of them were lightly described in the Bonhams catalog leaving two o...

HarperCollins recently reissued four Sylvia Plath books with new covers on their Harper Perennial Modern Classics imprint. The four books are: Ariel , Ariel: The Restored Edition , The Collected Poems , and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams . Ariel , ( HarperCollins | Amazon ) This is the first full reissue & repackaging of Plath's most famous collection of poems since 1999. It's also the first time, ever, in the US that Plath's Ariel  is published with non-white/cream cover. Ariel: The Restored Edition , ( HarperCollins | Amazon ) This is the first repackaging of Ariel: The Restored Edition since 2005, when it first appeared in paperback. I love, love, love the note on the back of the book: "Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it."  Perfect. The Collected Poems , ( HarperCollins | Amazon ) This is the first repackaging of both The Collected Poems and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams  since 2008. Johnny Pa...

It has been quite some time since a "Sylvia Plath: Did you know…" appeared on this blog so I thought I should remedy this unintended gap. Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar (1963) is a fun book to read for its hidden messages and allusions. Plath carefully and consciously manipulated time and people to construct a work based off of many experiences in her own life, but undoubtedly also added fictional color. One scene in the novel in particular that always makes me chuckle is Esther's motivation for wanting to spend her summer writing a novel. She writes: Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people. (1963:126) After this, Esther drafts a first paragraph, Elaine sat on the breezeway in an old yellow nightgown of her mother's waiting for something to happen. It was a sweltering morning in July, and drops of sweat crawled down her back one by one, like slow insects. I leaned back and read what I had written. I...

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes traveled to the end of Spain for their honeymoon in the summer of 1956. After getting married, they went from London to Cambridge to London to Paris to Madrid, where they rested before moving on to Alicante and, ultimately, Benidorm. They left Spain via Barcelona on 22 August 1956, stayed in Paris for about a week, and returned to England on 29 August 1956. In all she had been one the continent for more than two months. This post is about Plath's time in Benidorm and was inspired by Gail Crowther's finding and sending me the following two videos in April: Benidorm in Color, 1950s and Antique photographs of Benidorm . These, in congruence with a long paper on Plath's time Benidorm "De quan Sylvia Plath va vindre a Benidorm" by Pasqual Almiñana Orozco , were positively revelatory in my understanding more clearly than ever Plath's time there. Of course, one cannot consider Plath's time in Benidorm, also, without use of the ri...

Faber & Faber recently announced a new branding , going officially from Faber and Faber to Faber & Faber. If you collect Sylvia Plath books, this might add a new look to the spines of your collection. Faber are re-releasing/re-publishing several Sylvia Plath books this fall and in the early part of 2014. Time will tell if the new branding is on any of these titles. But, here is what we can look forward to in the near future. Published earlier this month was Sylvia Plath: Drawings , with an introduction by Plath's daughter Frieda Hughes. Also published in paperback is the Carol Ann Duffy selection of Sylvia Plath Poems . Published on 7 November 2013: The Bell Jar , Ariel , and The Journals of Sylvia Plath . For Ariel and The Bell Jar , Faber's gone retro and into their archive, choosing cover designs that match some of the editions published in the 1960s and 1970s. For a (complete?) archive of their covers, please go see the books pages on my website for Sylvia ...

Sylvia Plath mentions the song " Big Rock Candy Mountain " in her short story "The Day Mr Prescott Died": As I helped Mama up the stone steps to the porch, I could hear a creaking and sure enough, there was Ben Prescott sitting and swinging on the porch hammock like it was any other day in the world but the one his Pop died. He just sat there, lanky and tall as life. What really surprised me was he had his favorite guitar in the hammock beside him. Like he'd just finished playing "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," or something. ( Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams , Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2008, p. 223) Plath wrote about the real life events that inspired this story in two letters to Gordon Lameyer written on 22 and 23 June 1954. Plath had recently visited Winthrop because her childhood friend Ruth Freeman's father passed away suddenly. Plath does not however, in either of the letters, make reference to the song. The original letters ar...

Day 4 - Sylvia Plath's Fiction: A Critical Study by Luke Ferretter and The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath edited by Anita Helle On the fourth day of Plathmaszaa my true love gave to me Books to put Plath's works in context In Sylvia Plath's Fiction: A Critical Study , Luke Ferretter breathes life back into Plath's prose which largely has been ignored. One may want to buy Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams  too, and, while you are at it, request photocopies of Plath's short stories from the archives (primarily from Smith College, Indiana University and Emory University) to help as you read this book. And, the journey into archive of Plath has never been so fully examined as in The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath edited by Anita Helle. Though published in 2007, this book has not lost any relevance, and remains among the most important works on Plath to ever see the light of day. In two parts, "The Plath Archive" and "...