The modern age supplies, at our fingertips, a wealth of information. Some of it is good. Some of it bad. Some of it is really bad.  Over the last year or two this blog has featured images of some of the people Sylvia Plath knew from her Smith College teachers to boys she dated at Amherst, Yale, and Princeton. I do hope this is good---if not really good---information to have. One particular person I have always been interested in because there is so little know about him is Hamish Stewart, the guy who accompanied Plath to the St. Botolph's Review party where she met, and bit, Ted Hughes, on the night of 25 February 1956. During the daytime, Plath met with Dr. Davy for a long time at his office at the University Health Centre, she read in Racine, and had dinner with Jane, Winthrop Means, and Nat Lamar. The gloss on Stewart in the Journals and the Letters is basically basic:  "David Hamish Stewart (1933– ), Canadian; B.A. 1956, English, Queens’ College, Cambridge; dated SP in ...

The recent news of the copy of Saint Botolph's Review formerly owned by Ted Hughes being acquired by the British Library was welcome. And for the sake of this blog post, which has been in the works & in the queue since February, the timing could not have been better. For it involves the location of Sylvia Plath's copy of Saint Botolph's Review . Touché! The Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia has eight books formerly belonging to Sylvia Plath. Of particular note is that this repository holds Sylvia Plath's copy of the Saint Botolph's Review , of which an image is featured below . Like Hughes' copy, there is a some kind of liquid stain on the front cover. Though we know Plath bought her copy from Bert Wyatt-Brown on or near Queens Bridge on Silver Street, did the stain happen before or after she "got drunk, very very beautifully drunk" on the evening of 25 February 1956? I have long wondered where this copy was, have yo...

The new British Library Spoken Word CD Sylvia Plath is garnering much interest. Concurrently, the British Library have announced the acquisition of Ted Hughes' copy of the Saint Botolph's Review , complete with wine stains from a Luke Myers bicycling accident! The news first appeared via the Herald de Paris in their article " Library Acquires Stained Ted Hughes Journal ." This timing of this acquisition, which they've known about for sometime, is likely intentional as the Spoken Word CD includes Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in conversation discussing their lives together, how they met, etc.. How they met is the stuff of legend, captured with rapture by Plath in her journal the morning after. The Independent 's article " The Poetry of Courtship: Plath and Hughes Caught on Tape " by Jonathan Browne is a little uneven (they had been married nearly five years when the recording of "Two of a Kind" was made). The title of the article itself is a...

I recently received from a friend a photocopy of Saint Botolph's Review 2, which was published in 2006, 50 years after the first issue (pictured here). The first issue is, of course, mythic. One can just imagine the launch party for Saint Botolph's Review 2. The canes & the dentures, the 5 o'clock dinner & blue hair... Counting pills rather than conquests...   Lucas Myers contributed an essay on pages 8-10 called "The Voices of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes." The essay has likely new pieces of information: conversations & memories remembered that may or may not have been in his 2001 memoir Crow Steered Bergs Appeared. But it's the end of the essay that I want to write about today. As most of you haven't read the essay I realize this puts you at a disadvantage, however I'll try to be fair and keep things in context. As Myers concludes his essay, he discusses how Plath's "talent developed phenomenally" during her...

Happy Saint Botolph's Review Day! Ladies, make sure you bite someone on the cheek today!