The archival finding aid is many things. It is a textual map.  It serves as a basic outline of a collection. It is also a key. It provides information, sometimes minute (item level) and sometimes very broad and general.  The Plath mss II finding aid is a wonderful document which was created by the Lilly Library in 1977, the year of the collection's acquisition from Aurelia Schober Plath. It has been online for as long as I can remember and may be one of my most frequented web pages.  When I was rummaging... I mean... when I was on my recent very serious research trip which helped to put the finishing touches on my current book project (the final manuscript of which was submitted recently), I went through boxes 8-15 methodically, folder by folder, and for the most part page by page. I spent the most time in boxes 13 through 15, perhaps, for no other reason than it was material with which I barely spent much time reading on previous research trips.  In box 13, folders...

The other day I was looking at some of my photographs from one of the Lilly Library's wonderful Sylvia Plath collections and I was instantly inspired to present some of the information to you in a blog post.  In Plath mss II, Box 7, 1949 loose items, there are a bounty of Plathian things that she once used in her daily or perhaps more ephemeral life. On the day I photographed the contents---a perk I had due to my editorial work on Plath's Letters , the contents were: 1. Typed on a small, blue sheet of paper: "An End" by Sara Teasdale, which ends "And summer will not come to me again". Plath famously used this as the title for her short story which was her first fictional piece in Seventeen  magazine.  2. Record of Summer Dates for July and August 1949 3. Handwritten quote from Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus , "The Everlasting No":  "How beautiful to die of broken-heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in practice; every window of your Feel...

In Box 10 of Plath mss II at the Lilly Library is perhaps one of my favorite documents Sylvia Plath created. Folder 6 in said box contains a six lovely and wonderful items that were once a part of Plath's day-to-day life. The folder name on the finding aid is simply "Miscellaneous."   The first item in the folder is a typed list of poetry and prose submissions, annotated with acceptances (dates, periodicals, and money earned) from 1948 to 1952. It is the first of such submissions lists which have been more famously made use of for the 1959 to 1963 period (these leafs are held by Smith College).  The second item is a beautiful handwritten thing of "Excuses for unwanted dates". The third item is a catalog of "boys gone out with [in the] 1948-1949 (school year)". The back page is "Boys who asked & were unlucky".   Fourth, is a two-paragraph "Leaves from a Date-Palm Tree" in which Plath incorporates the last names of the boys she da...

In my previous trip to the Lilly Library in March 2015, where much of the research went into T he Letters of Sylvia Plath , I skimmed the surface of the typescript pages for Aurelia Schober Plath's Letters Home . In it were located copies of two letters that Sylvia Plath sent to Margaret Cantor, her employer for the second half of the summer of 1952. But an exhaustive search through the typescripts could not be undertaken due to more pressing research needs. Finding two letters was wonderful, and I knowingly passed on the chance to look page by page for any other letters.  On Monday and Tuesday of this week I did do such a chore. And it was a chore but it did provide a nice break from standing up and from taking photographs. The paper is ludicrously thin and hard to handle. It also does not stack nicely and neatly, which is frustrating to someone like me who prefers things orderly and squared. The paper is largely either pink in color, or green. Transcriptions of the letters to War...

My third and final day in the archive was much like the first two: inundated with the papery artefacts of Sylvia Plath's life. Yesterday I ended the day in Box 15 which has a disbound publications scrapbook that with items from 1949 to 1959. The bulk of the materials are before 1955, with a smattering of later stuff which lead me to conclude that possibly this was a scrapbook created by Aurelia Plath. The original pages on which these documents were taped do not appear to be extant, so if they were annotated (and by whom) is a mystery. There are a few examples on some of the clippings with Mrs. Plath's and Olive Higgins Prouty's handwriting (particularly 1959). Very interesting though. The scrapbook is in 66 folders (one folder per page, basically) and it has payment stubs, letters, and clippings. And that was what I intended to start today with.  However, I decided to veer off course when I was settling in for the morning and called to see a First Folio of Shakespeare. It ...

Most of the evening last night I spent organizing my notes and photographs, renaming files frim IMG_9938 to something more meaningful like "Heavy_Women_original_The_Bell_Jar". This, in particular, is a reference to some papers in Plath mss., that first Plath collection the Lilly Library acquired. The finding aid for this reads, "Removed from verso of typescript fragment of The Bell Jar ." Another poem, "Small Hours" has text related to the novel, too: "verso of typescript fragment of The Bell Jar ." Looking further down the finding aid, there is a cross-reference under The Bell Jar 's entry: "'Small Hours' and 'Heavy Women' removed from versos." So I wanted to see these pages to make sense of how the poems were removed from the typescript pages.  The typescript is page 136 and there are two copies. The scene of the novel depicted is when Esther Greenwood tells her family doctor "I can't sleep. I can't re...

Today was the first in-person archival research trip in many years. My first at Indiana since March of 2015. It was a truly strange feeling to be traveling again by airplane; and to stay in a hotel. I took a walk around campus and downtown Bloomington when I arrived and enjoyed the clear skies and signs of spring.  A hill full of daffodils above Campus River This my sixth visit to the Lilly Library (2002, 2003, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2022). I began the day with Plath mss which consists of the "scrap paper" Plath herself sold to a London book dealer in 1961. She knew the papers were going to join those of Ted Hughes (Hughes mss) at Indiana University and it is a thrill to work with these papers in particular. And knowing that Plath knew where they were header---in her lifetime---makes these papers, among all the other archival documents that exist, seem more significant in some ways.  After Plath mss, I went on the Plath mss II, and looked at a few boxes I wanted to spend more time...

Sylvia Plath's wall, desk, and pocket diary/calendars offer the researcher a wealth of biographical and bibliographical information about her life, work, and times.  During her first year at Smith College, if Plath kept a calendar for her first semester its whereabouts is unknown. But the Lilly Library holds a wall calendar for 1951 which features crucial information about Plath's assignments, social life, and so much more. The calendar for 1952 is a desk calendar; as is the incomplete one for 1953 (due to her suicide attempt and recovery, entries slow down and cease by 24 August). The 1953 calendar features images of Germany and had has days, months, and other information all in the German language. If she kept a calendar for the spring term of 1954 its location is unknown. 1954-1955 Calendar From the summer of 1954 when she was at Harvard Summer School until the Spring of 1957 when she completed her degree at the University of Cambridge, Plath fairly regularly kept a log of h...

The idea for this post came to me back in August 2012! And for no real reason other than gross negligence, it has been festering in my "Blog Drafts" folder since then. I meant to post it in 2019, but then somehow now it is 2021. Today is the day to change all that. Better now, perhaps, than never. Sylvia Plath used a number of different typewriters during her lifetime. The typewriter identified in the below 1954 photograph of Sylvia Plath at her 26 Elmwood Road house in Wellesley is the Hermes 2000. More about Hermes typewriters . When Plath was at Smith College as a student and into her time at Cambridge when she was on Fulbright, she used the Smith-Corona Sterling. The above photo on the left was simply, permanently, borrowed from an eBay listing. However, there is a photograph of Plath's own typewriter, on her desk in Lawrence House, in her Smith College Scrapbook held by the Lilly Library. In this photo (above right, cropped), the distinctive ligh...

One of the things I did in 2020 was read all the books on my shelves that I had not read. As well, I read some "classics" that I could borrow from the library. A number of these were inspired by Sylvia Plath who was a far better reader of books than I will ever be.  It started right at the turn of the 2019-2020 New Year when I read Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago . Plath read that on her week-long trip from the US to England in December 1959. It took me about month and I read it, in part, from my hometown to Seattle and back! Then, around the time of the shutdown in March, I read Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground.  And I decided that I can and should read only Russian novel per year. Next was W. B. Yeats' "The Unicorn from the Stars", the play that featured some lines that Plath saw as prophecy in November 1962.  I moved onto Lawrence ( The Rainbow , Women in Love , Lady Chatterley's Lover ), Austen's Northanger Abbey and Brontë's Villette . T...

The following post was drafted in 2018! As October is American Archives Month is seems rather appropriate to dust and thus polish this post off in the middle of it.  The Poetry archive is split between the University of Chicago and the Lilly Library. At the same time, the journal's headquarters in Chicago maintains an archive itself of documents and books that are likely very valuable resources. This post is specifically about the holdings at the Lilly Library, which I received copies of as part of some of the last minute and tangential work I was doing on The Letters of Sylvia Plath . The post from 2013 about the holdings at the University of Chicago can be read here . The Poetry materials at the Lilly Library can be broadly classed into three categories: correspondence, typescripts, and proofs. First up, the correspondence, with brief annotations about the content of each letter: 1. Henry Rago to Sylvia Plath, 27 December 1962: accepting three poems "Eavesdropper...

The last picture postcard that we know Sylvia Plath sent went from the Dordogne, France, to her mother at 3 Chalcot Square, London. Dated 10 July, Plath wrote the postcard which depicts "Montignac-sur-Vézère (Dordogne). Grotte de Lascaux" and send it from Saint-Céré, France, and was postmarked 12 July 1961. A subcaption on the card reads, "Diverticule (paroi droite): Vache rouge et premier des chevaux dits 'Chinois'." It was published by Serv. Commercial Monuments Historiques. Gd. Palais. Av. Alexandre III. Porte G. Paris. There are two stamps on the postcard. One for .25 Francs depicting a woman, designed by Posyes. And another for .05 Francs depicting the Coat of Arms of Oran (Algeria). Aurelia Plath added "Stars Over Dordogne" in blue pen in the top middle of the page. Plath addressed the letter: Mrs. A. S. PLATH c/o HUGHES 3 Chalcot Square London N.W.1 Angleterre Plath and Hughes were toward the end of their holiday and she repo...

The second picture postcard Sylvia Plath sent to her mother from France, which is also the second to last one she sent that we know about, depicted "LE MONT SAINT-MICHEL (Manche) Ensemble Sud par Grande Marée." Dated Sunday, 2 July 1961, the postmark was illegible because the cancellation stamp mostly did not cover the postage stamp. Thus, it is unclear on which day it was sent. It was published by Service Commercial Monuments Historiques Grand Palais -- Avenue Alexandre III -- Paris. The stamp was .50 Francs and depicted Tlemcen Grande Mosque. I believe it may have been designed by Pheulpin. The postcard is numbered "2" in pencil in the top right, just to the left of the stamp. Plath reports they are at a "crêperie” in Douarnenez. Oddly, she spelled Frieda's name wrong, which is something I checked and re-checked dozens of times during the project.  Aurelia Plath annotated the postcard, translating "Grande Marée" into English, "high t...

Sylvia Plath sent three picture postcards to her mother when she and Ted Hughes visited France in June and July 1961. The purpose was a holiday, but also to go to the farmhouse of Dido and W. S. Merwin in Lacan de Loubressac. This post is about the first card; the other two will be highlighted in a bit. These are the last three picture postcards that we know Plath sent. Meaning, she might have sent others, but if she did we did not have access to them for The Letters of Sylvia Plath project. The first picture postcard that Plath sent to her mother depicted "ROUEN (Seine-Maritime) Le Gros Horloge (1389) L'Arcade (1151)." Dated Thursday, 29 June 1961, the postmark was from Rouen, Seine Maritime, France, on the same day. The postcard was published by Les Editions d'Art, 15 rue Martel, in the 10th Arrondissement. The stamp was .30 Francs and depicted Jean Nicot designed by J. Combet. The postcard is numbered "1" in pencil in the top right corner above th...

Several years ago I worked with Sylvia Plath's copy of Ayn Rand's novel The Foutainhead . In a blog post about that experience, I made a table listing the page numbers on which she made annotations and comments. Too little attention has been paid to Plath's annotations. I had in mind when I did the aforementioned blog post to spend more time with Plath's library but the whole Letters of Sylvia Plath project kind of took over my life. Part of the thrill of The Fountainhead was that it was, and still is, held privately so it was a privilege to both work with it and present the information to you. However, for this blog post, I chose to do a book held by Smith College: e.e. cummings i six nonlectures (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954). Plath was given this copy in 1955 by her Smith classmater Sue Weller with the inscription: for Syl, in memory of a delightfully, indolent spring vacation. Sue– 1955 I should remind you that I reassembled, via Libr...