Unbelievable. Simply the only word I can think of to describe November 19 & 20, 1998. How did we miss it? How did we not know? The (Sylvia Plath) world was still reeling from the publication of Birthday Letters and the then quite recent passing of Ted Hughes. Just three articles (per Lexis-Nexis Academic) ran on this particular story and appeared in The Guardian , The Evening Standard , and The Irish Times . The headlines were provocative to say the least... The Guardian article, authored by Rory Carroll, used "Discovery of Plath's Forgotten Teenage Poems Dismays Friends." The Evening Standard tried out "Early Plath Platitudes Dismay Poetry World." And, The Irish Times said "Plath Find Sheds Light on Sexuality." The first paragraph of Carroll's article reads, "The literary world was stunned last night after the discovery of three forgotten Sylvia Plath poems revealed both sexual disgust and technical immaturity, providing an embar...

A small battle was waged twenty years ago in the spring of 1992 over the selling of the a copy of a first edition Knopf The Colossus , signed and inscribed by Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes. On June 3, 1992, a letter was published in The Times called "War-Plath" (p. 14). The article quotes expresses the concern of the "Sylvia Plath Society" that this one sale might be "the first of a tranche of Plath's books and papers Hughes might sell." The article quotes Elizabeth Sigmund as saying, ''I think it is amazing that he is selling this book, which should go to the family. If he does not want it he should give it to the children, Frieda and Nicholas, or to one of Britain's libraries.'' It also says Sigmund is the president of the Society! It was then stated that, "[t]he next volume to reach the market would be Plath's annotated version of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets *." Hughes and his wife Carol responded, "This vol...