On 19 June 2013, Bonhams (Kensington, London) will auction in lot 202 a rare, uncorrected proof copy of The Bell Jar by Victoria Lucas (Sylvia Plath). Printed in 1962 in an unknown, but limited number of copies, the uncorrected proof of The Bell Jar is the pièce de résistance and also the holy grail of books for a Plath collector. For that matter, one might also want to include the uncorrected proof of The Colossus (1960), too. These books are most desirable, as in possessing more intrinsic--as well as monetary--value as they were printed during Plath's lifetime. The catalog entry for the auction reads: The Bell Jar by Victoria Lucas, UNCORRECTED PROOF COPY, publisher's wrappers, lettered "(Not for Sale) Uncorrected Proof Copy" on upper cover, light spotting, slight wear at extremities of spine, 8vo, Heinemann, 1962 Estimate: £2,000 - 4,000; €2,300 - 4,700; US$ 3,000 - 6,000 Footnotes "AND HOW ARE YOU FEELING THIS MORNING, MISS LUCAS?" Uncorr...

Please keep in mind that the deadline for Plath Profiles Volume 6 is in one month, 1 April 2013, at 7 PM (Eastern US Time) Submissions of your work on Sylvia Plath for Plath Profiles that are received after 1 April (that is, after 7:00:01 p.m. on 1 April) will be considered on a case-by-case basis but will more than likely be held out for the following volume. Deadlines are deadlines, after all. And for the love of Plath, please read and follow the submission guidelines . *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** Perhaps I do not even need to post anything about it, especially so far in advance, but for some reason it seems necessary and/or appropriate. After Volume 6 of Plath Profiles goes live this summer, I will cease to be affiliated with the journal. It has been an honor to work with its contributors and correspond with its readers; however, after very long consideration I have decided this is the best course of action for me to take. I anticipate helping to promoting future issu...

Fifty years ago today, 14 January 1963, The Bell Jar by Victoria Lucas (Sylvia Plath) was published. The creation of and publication history of the novel is one of the more fascinating aspects of Plath scholarship. The secretive nature in which it was written - undated, the exact start and completion date are still unknown as of right now- as well as the process by which Plath saw it accepted and published, change the way in which we might consider Plath as a business woman. In fact, the process by which she saw all of her work come to print is something like leaves me feeling envy and awe: certainly not the image of your 1970s neurotic Sylvia Plath. Plath did tell some of her friends and colleagues that she was writing a novel, but was very reticent to divulge too many details. One of the earliest references - if not the earliest - appears in a letter to Ann and Leo Goodman dated 27 April 1961, in which Plath writes she is more than a third of the way through a novel on the subject...

Lynda K Bundtzen began the day discussing Sylvia Plath’s psychotherapy, use of unconscious in 1958 poems. Making use of Plath's therapy notes with Dr. Ruth Beuscher, Lynda referred at times to Sigmund Freud's "Mourning and Meloncholia", Lacan, and Letters Home , and looking applicably at several poems by Sylvia Plath, among them "The Beekeeper's Daughter," "Man in Black," "Electra on Azalea Path," "The Colossus," "Daddy," and "Purdah." Langdon Hammer spoke on James Merrill’s use of Ouija Board for poetry inspiration. Hammer has been at work on a biography of Merrill for a decade which is most definitely a labor of love. It promises to be thorough and excellent, judging from the essays of his that I have read and the presentations through which I have sat. This was not a paper on Sylvia Plath, but Hammer did refer to Plath's practice of Ouijaing with Ted Hughes. Between this and the 1 o'clock p...

Last week I spent a day in a new archive that I was glad to say holds some Sylvia Plath archival materials. The exact collection and contents will be made known in "These Ghostly Archives 5: Subtitle to be Determined" that Gail Crowther and I plan to write this winter. But, because that is a long way off I thought at the least that I could post a preview image to maybe make you wonder about it. The image below is a cropped postmark from a letter Sylvia Plath sent to ...

The New York Public Library has a couple divisions that hold Sylvia Plath manuscripts and related materials. In the Manuscripts and Archives division is The New Yorker records, which holds correspondence to, from, and about Plath. The Berg Collection holds a varied assortment of Plath materials, from juvenilia to late works. This post will merely summarize the holdings, and but to learn more, either visit the library yourself (recommended) or please see " These Ghostly Archives 4: Looking for New England " by Gail Crowther and myself, published in Plath Profiles 5 (Summer 2012) (also recommended). New Yorker Records The bulk of material on Plath is in Series III, Editorial Correspondence, subseries 3.3 Fiction Correspondence, 1952-1980, for the following years; 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1977. In the scope and content note, it explains that poetry correspondence is included in the fiction correspondence file. There are also some Plath related ...

Two poems by Plath - "Hardcastle Crags" and "Wuthering Heights" (the latter read by Ted Hughes) are part of the current British Library exhibition "Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands." The exhibit list is posted online here ; and you can read a little bit about the exhibit here, too . Archival materials from Hughes's River and the Elmet books are included as well, and the exhibit runs until 25 September 2012. A thoroughly modern sounding exhibit that features a plethora of different information formats including "sound recordings, videos, letters, photographs, maps, song lyrics and drawings - as well as manuscripts and printed editions." Thanks to ~VC for the information. And... Plath Profiles 5 is in the final stages of production. Who's ready for it?

One more brief post about Sylvia Plath and Cambridge that has grabbed my attention since the recent story about the skeletal remains of a woman, mouse & shrew to be back on exhibit in Cambridge after a long storage away from the public's eye. Sylvia Plath is considered a " Cambridge Author. " It is on the website just linked to where we find something quite interesting about Plath's course in Tragedy. What you will find is "an examination of her work in the light of her academic experience in Cambridge. She studied the Tragedy paper - a cornerstone of the course from the very start - and resonances with the material she read for it can be identified in her writing." The site is broken into different parts, one being " Sylvia Plath and the Tragedy Paper. " One of the more interesting pages and links appears in the section " The Tragedy Paper: Continuity and Change. " It is here that a link is included to a PDF of the actual ex...

Finally after sitting on this information for nearly a year, I can post about the archival Plath material contained within the Oscar Williams mss. at the Lilly Library. The Oscar Williams mss, 1920-1966 contains seven poems by Sylvia Plath; and in addition, holds several photographs in which Plath appears (and Ted Hughes too). Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes visited Oscar Williams in New York in early June 1958. According to Plath's address book held at Smith College, Williams lived at 35 Water Street in NY; which is in Lower Manhattan near South Ferry. The block where Williams lived is no longer extant and has been replaced a modern office building. The poems held are typescript copies that Plath likely gave to Williams at the time of visit to New York City in June 1958. The poems are: "Full Fathom Five," "Sculptor," "Black Rook in Rainy Weather," "On The Difficulty of Conjuring Up a Dryad," "Sow," "Departure of the Ghost,...

Ted Hughes, in April, received a blue plaque in North Tawton . Thanks to Cath for the link. The poor Sylvia Plath letter that failed to sell in February through Bonham’s, also failed to sell in a June 22 auction and Bonham’s in New York , and for a reduced estimate. I have about $45 dollars to my name so in another year, at this rate, I might be able to buy it! If you have an estimated 3,000-5,000 GBP to spare, on July 14, Sotheby’s is auctioning a self-portrait of Plath dated 7/25/1949. I hardly see a resemblance but it must be real. See Lot 98 . Plath Profiles 4 is in production, it is looking like it will be just under 400 pages of great greatness. Expect publication in the first week or so of July. Details to follow!

Like just about any other year, 2010 for Sylvia Plath was interesting and occasionally controversial. The year saw just one major publication by Plath, and that was the British Library’s Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath CD in April . I was fortunate enough to be asked to write the introduction, which was both a great honor and fun to do. If you have not yet purchased the CD or borrowed it from a library I would highly recommend you do (and not for the intro, mind you, but for the audio tracks). By ordering through the link on the sidebar of this blog you can save 10%. The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath CD wins, hands down, for my favorite cover award of the year. The only book by Plath published this year was by Faber who published a new, hardback edition of Ariel in May , but this was of the originally published Ariel edited by Ted Hughes. Books about Plath were a little skimpy this year too; but those new books that did appear in print are considerably important and extremely valuable co...

Google News Archive has made available an additional article on Sylvia Plath’s first suicide attempt in August 1953. The article “Step Up Hunt for Missing Smith Student” was printed in the Schenectady Gazette on August 26, 1953: 5. This is now the second article made available by this newspaper, and the 173 that I’ve found. The first 172 are listed in the bibliography appended to my Plath Profiles 3 article " 'They Had to Call and Call': The Search for Sylvia Plath ." If any of this blogs readers have time, please visit your local libraries and review microfilm available for August 25-29, 1953. If you find articles, please make copies and send them to me. Collaborative Plathing is good Plathing. Keep scanning Google! And keep on searching...we'll find her yet... You can see a bibliography of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt, and read PDF's of them, over at A celebration, this is .

Al Alvarez's reaction to Ted Hughes' "Last Letter" appeared on The Guardian 's website a short while ago. The article, from what I can tell & was told, was in Saturday's Review section of said newspaper. Elisabeth Gray's "Wish I had a Sylvia Plath" was reviewed by TheaterMania.com and by BroadwayWorld.com . I saw "Three Women" twice on Saturday and have a review of it; but with all this other news going on will wait a day or so to post it. Emily Banas at Indiana University Northwest has written the following news release: IU Northwest English professor William Buckley publishes Volume Three of Plath Profiles . You will find the announcement to which I refer in the title of this post within the news release.

A few of you may have read my paper " 'They Had to Call and Call': The Search for Sylvia Plath " in Plath Profiles 3. For this article, I used microfilm and internet resources to create a bibliography of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt on August 24, 1953 that vastly increases the known publications which ran the news story and builds upon those articles presented in previous bibliographies. Microfilm is presently the best resource we have for searching through older newspapers; and whilst it is not the sexiest technology out there it certainly does serve a good purpose. However, some genius decided to scan obscure & not-so-obscure newspapers from microfilm, run OCR, and make them searchable via Google News Archive . There are other tools for this kind of thing, such as ProQuest Historical Newspapers and others. However, since Google News Archive is largely free and doesn't require a subscription, this is one of my favorite tools and will great...

Two contributors to Plath Profiles 3 successfully defended their doctoral theses this year and deserve a special shout out and applause. Kara Kilfoil, of the University of Calgary, recently successfully defended her thesis, “ Birthday Letters : Annotations and Commentary,” earning a Ph.D.in English with specialization in Modern poetry. Congratulations to Kara; and if you haven’t already, please do read two sample annotations in Plath Profiles 3. You’ll find they open Birthday Letters in a whole new way.Oh, and that’s Kara, Dr. Kilfoil if you’re nasty. Earlier this year, Gail Crowther of Lancaster University, successfully defended her thesis “The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath”, earning her Ph.D. in Sociology. Paging Dr. Crowther, Dr. Crowther, you have a call on line 3. “Do you really think she’ll pull through...It’s really serious.” Gail has two pieces in Plath Profiles 3 . The first was written with Plath’s friend Elizabeth Sigmund , and the second co-written with me . The...

This blog post kind of got away from me. If it's as nasty outside where you live as it is where I live, then maybe that's ok... Val Hennessey at the Daily Mail reviews Lesley McDowell's Between the Sheets in " Clever Girls with Terrible Taste in Men ." I read the book over the winter and found it lacking. Plath didn't belong in with the rest of the women for one reason: she didn't put up with Ted Hughes's infidelity. All the other relationships in the book were sadly portrayed and I kept screaming at the book "Leave the bastard!" These men, whether they or I knew it or not, taught me everything I need to know about relationships. The stories were repetitive and far too similar, and did not do much to make me interested in the lives or the writings of those featured. It was too the point that I dreaded reading the Plath chapter, which is the last chapter. But it read far better than I expected. This disappointment with the book in general ...

Recently published is Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill by Helen Vendler. The deadline for general submissions for Plath Profiles 3 is next Thursday, 15 April. Submissions closed last week for special papers on "Sylvia Plath and Material Culture". Late submissions will be considered for publication in Plath Profiles 3, but may be held over at the discretion of the editors. If you pre-ordered your copy of The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath from the British Library, look for this to ship next week as its publication date is 14 April. If you pre-ordered from University of Chicago Press, look for this after 20 April, its US publication date.

Daniel Huws' Memories of Ted Hughes is now for sale in England. Published 1 April 2010 by Richard Hollis, Amazon.co.uk (& Amazon.ca) actually list the title as being in stock. Thanks to Cath in Bath for letting us know! Anne Stevenson is interviewed by Rosita Boland in " Going Against the Grain " in Saturday's issue of the Irish Times . Birthday Letters is mentioned in " When Grief Turns to Art " by Mark Feeney in Friday's Boston Globe . I recently stumbled upon " Reading Plath " in a journal called Kingfisher. This was published on pages 1-2, in 2002's Volume One, Number Three, Seventh Edition. Plath Profiles is accepting submissions still for volume 3, due out in the summer. There are two deadlines to note. For the general issue, 15 April is the date to keep in mind. The deadline is 1 April for those submitting papers on "Sylvia Plath and Material Culture." These papers should address materiality in ...

I recently learned of three new articles. Travis, Isabelle. "'I Have Always Been Scared of You': Sylvia Plath, Perpetrator Trauma and Threatening Victims." European Journal of American Culture Vol 28, No. 3. October 2009: 277-293. Tunstall, Lucy. "Aspects of Pastoral in Sylvia Plath's 'Child'." English Vol. 58, No. 222. Autumn 2009: 230-242. Wilcockson, Colin. "Ted Hughes' Undergraduate Years at Pembroke College, Cambridge: Some Myths Demystified." Agenda Vol. 44, No. 4/Vol. 45, No. 1. Winter 2009: 147-153. In the Wilcockson article, he was given permission to quote from Daniel Huws' forthcoming Memories of Ted Hughes, 1952-1963 , published on 1 April 2010 by Richard Hollis. Right now it only seems available through Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca . It's a good thing they invented airplanes. Also published by Richard Hollis on 1 April is Poems and Journals, 1960-1968 by Susan Alliston , Ted Hughes con...

Will 2010 bring some great new publications? Here are a few I've found out about so far: There is the eagerly anticipated Sylvia Plath's Fiction by Luke Ferretter , which on Amazon.co.uk is slated for release on 31 July 2010. In May, Faber is releasing a new hardback of Ariel . Look for Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill by Helen Vendler in April. There are bound to be additional publications.