The BBC's Radio 4 has made a three-part series on Sylvia Plath entitled  The Writing Life of Sylvia Plath . The first episode airs today at 1600 GMT in London and should be available via their website shortly afterwards.  Information about Episode 1: Childhood, Youth and Motherhood Sylvia Plath was an extraordinarily talented writer. She wrote with rare force and wit, hers was a singular voice. She is the author of the classic coming of age novel The Bell Jar , and one of the 20th century’s most important poetry collections, 1965’s Ariel . But her words have been overshadowed by the details of her biography; her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, its dissolution, and her death by suicide in 1963. In this new three part series, the focus is firmly on Sylvia Plath’s writing as Mariella Frostrup aims to paint a more nuanced picture of Plath as a poet and novelist, cutting through the noise to see her more clearly and putting her life in the context of her work, rather than the o...

Sylvia Plath first worked on her short story called "The Smoky Blue Piano" in the fall of 1954, possibly for her short story writing course with Alfred Kazin. By the 27th of December 1954, she was rewriting it. She submitted it to the Ladies Home Journal the following day and it was rejected in January 1955 with a personal note. She rewrote it and sent it back out, but it was rejected again in February because it famously lacked an "indefinable something" ( LV1 881). Plath, ever the diligent and persistent writer, was at work on the story again on 12 August 1955 when she sent it to Woman's Day (per her pocket diary) and experimented with hair styles.  She maintained a list of periodicals to which she sent "The Smoky Blue Piano", and this included McCall's , Collier's , The American , Cosmopolitan , Good Housekeeping , and the Woman's Home Companion . The 12 August submission, per this list, says Everywoman's , not Woman's Day . ...

Earlier this year, Cambridge University Press released the first monograph for Dorka Tamás , whom you likely know from social media, conferences and symposia, and the Sylvia Plath Society. Dorka's book, Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural , is available in hardback as well as digitally via the CUP website . The book description reads, " Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural brings a fresh and interdisciplinary perspective to the reading of Plath. Following recently published new material, this book offers a novel approach to the re-examination and celebration of supernatural themes in Plath's writings. It expands Plath studies by establishing Plath's creative and intellectual interests in early modern literature about witches and demonology, knowledge of the legacies of the Salem witch trials during McCarthyism, and her depth of understanding of the complex relationship between gender and magical powers. The book also demonstrates how Plath and her contemporaries responded...

In March, the Beinecke Library opened the recently processed collection of the Lois Ames Collection of Sylvia Plath. The finding aid is online here , and there is a convenient option to make a PDF which is, in some ways, easier to read. In my earlier post last year about the acquisition, as well as in this post from 2023 , I commented on a comment made by Mrs Plath about how Ames "stole both materials (manuscripts of Sylvia's) and snapshots from me." So I was fascinated to work with the papers on 23 and 24 March 2026 to see if I could make sense of Mrs Plath's claim, and, as well, see the materials that represent the start of the industry of Sylvia Plath.  What I encountered, though, was an enormous absence.  There are two boxes of correspondence, most of which feels like it is drafts of letters Ames wrote as well as some carbons of letters sent. There are incoming letters, but the majority of these are from Ted Hughes, Mrs Plath, Olwyn Hughes, and Harper & Row, ...

If you have about 50 minutes of time, and we all do, so do not think you do not, please give The Scholar’s Armchair #3 a watch.  The title of the programe is " Female Identities: Plath, Magazines, and Food " and it's a conversation between Dr. John Burton and Professor Caroline Smith on her work with Plath, food magazines, and much more.  Caroline Smith is the author of Season to Taste: Rewriting Kitchen Space in Contemporary Women’s Food Memoirs ( University Press of Mississippi, 2023 ) and  Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit ( Routledge, 2007 ). All links accessed: 16 March 2026

The last full day! I am sad but it has been a productive experience. A massive number of photographs to review, process, read, and assimiliate into the existing bank of knowledge on Sylvia Plath and the other figures that play in the story. And I want to say it is a real honor to have gotten to work with the papers the very week they opened for research and an absolute and sincere joy to relate some of the things I have seen to you. Thank you so much for reading.  I began day four working with Box 16, which I could not finish up on Thursday. Box 16 is Aurelia Schober Plath's papers, Diaries and notebooks. Fascinating documents. These consist of diaries she kept on trips to England and Europe as well as to write about her grandchildren visiting the US. It picks up from Box 15 which has earlier diaries and fragments up to the rather infamous summer of 1962 which has much shorthand at the crucial points, as well as pages that had been ripped out.  One of my favorite things in Box...

After leaving the Beinecke yesterday, I thought it might be poetic, or perhaps even prosaic, to talk a short walk up Prospect Street. Plath stayed at 238 Prospect Street and writes about it in The Bell Jar . During Esther Greenwood's visit to Buddy Willard, they "walked very slowly" in "the cold, black, three o'clock wind" from downtown New Haven "to the house where I was sleeping in the living-room on a couch that was too short because it only cost fifty cents a night instead of two dollars like most of the other places with proper beds" (1963, 63). It was dark when I got there as the library closed after sunset. This house is directly opposite Yale's chemistry facilities, and so you can imagine I wanted to go all the way, just like Buddy wanted to and visit the chemistry lab. It was, of course, famoulsy behind the Chemistry Lab where Buddy first kissed Esther Greenwood, chapped lips and all. There has been appreciable construction since I was...

Snow, sleet, and rain greeted me today on my drive to New Haven. I have been to this city only one time before, about 20 or so years ago on a day trip to see the Plath Sites. Or, the Richard Norton sites, such as my 2001 or 2002 self knew. I was not impressed. Anyway, the atrocious weather may have been a blessing as the George Washington Bridge was sans  traffic. As was every other road I travelled to get here until I got here. The Merritt Parkway--a road which Sylvia Plath herself took on excursions to Manhattan--was fine. A few back-ups on hills, because apparently driving uphill in Connecticut is just as hard as running up them.  The last few miles seemed to take the most amount of time. Ah---anticipation.  The Beienecke Library recently opened the Plath Family Papers. Word or mouth was that there was nothing shocking or revolutionary in them, but that is not really what I am looking for as I look through them. Maybe I do not even know what it is I am looking for, but...

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...

The Beinecke Library has published the Plath Family Papers finding aid .   There is, as can be imagined, a lot to unpack with the finding aid and a cursory review of it also indicates that there are things within it that need to be cleaned up and corrected.  But it is an enticing textual and organizational look at the papers that comprise the collection.  There are many letters from Plath to various people which is exciting. These include, without a doubt, the original letters Plath sent to her brother Warren. The Lilly Library has copies. The letters to Mrs. Plath are itemized, but those to her brother are not (at the time of writing). So it is unclear at the moment if there are more letters. Researchers will be able to access the collection in the first week of December. Undoubtedly there will be much more to discuss in time.  In case you missed it, Yale issued a press release on 7 Novembe r about the collection. All links accessed 21 November 2025. Revised 24...

Yale's Beinecks Library has been busy of late in the Sylvia Plath archive world. The Beinecke acquired recently the Lois Ames collection of Sylvia Plath from James Cummings of New York.  Ames passed away in 2022 . The papers are unprocessed, but is comprised of three boxes with correspondence, writings, printed material, research material, photographs, and other papers compiled for a biography of Sylvia Plath.  You may remember from this blog post back in 2023 that Mrs Plath wrote a friend that Ames stole materials from the house at Elmwood Road. But, to reiterate,  "I forgot about some of the materials I acquired over the years, such as this nugget from a letter in April 1983 that Aurelia Schober Plath wrote to a friend Mary Ann Montgomery: 'Lois Ames never wrote a biography, although she had a grant to do so, interviewed me during a whole summer and stole both materials (manuscripts of Sylvia's) and snapshots from me' (Montgomery mss, Lilly). Holy highl...

In February, I posted on the acquisition of the "Plath Family papers" by the Beinecke Library at Yale. Due to the inquisitiveness of Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, we have learned that the papers will open in the next few weeks (this Autumn).  That's it. That's the post. More information perhaps when there is some to share.  In the meantime, last Friday, the 12th of September, saw the publication by the LSU Press of Julie's most recent book Lives Revised:  Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath .  Congratulations, Julie! All links accessed 18 September 2025.

The recent identification of three of Sylvia Plath's drawings was fun. I enjoyed discussing these with Anna Dykta and bouncing off ideas and discussing the nuances of Plath's artwork as well as her travels. The drawing of a dome/tower labelled "Paris rooftops" in Drawings  (page 30, 2013) was another of Plath's pen and ink works about which I wondered, for years: where is this? For a while I have been convinced this was not drawn in Paris. For a while I was convinced based on the evidence Plath left, that it was drawn in Madrid. She wrote in a 7 July 1956 letter to her mother, "If only you could see me now, sitting in haltar and shorts seven stories high above the modern tooting city of Madrid on our large private balcony with gay blue-and-yellow tiles on floor and wall-shelves, pots of geranium and ivy, and across, baroque towers and a blazing blue sky even now, going on eight p.m. Ted is inside writing on another fable and I just finished a detailed design ...