The following guest blog post book review of Sylvia Plath in Context  is by Amy C. Rea. Thank you, Amy. Sylvia Plath in Context , edited by Tracy Brain, is a set of wide-ranging explorations of influences that have played a role in Plath's development as a writer. The book is grouped into sections covering literary, literary technique and influence, cultural contexts, sexual and gender contexts, political and religious contexts, biographical contexts, and Plath and place. While there are topics that have been covered in depth in the various biographies (the role of women in the 1940s and 50s, for example), this collection goes further by looking at topics like food, teaching preparation, scrapbooks, and the book packaging of various editions of Ariel and The Bell Jar . It's a valuable continuation of the process of extracting Plath's form of genius out of the strict biographical contexts she's been all too often forced into. To keep this post from falling into TL;...

This fall a number of books by and about Sylvia Plath will be published. First up, the books by Plath. On 5 September, a gorgeous hardback "Liberty" edition of The Bell Jar  will be issued. ( Amazon.co.uk ). The same day, Faber will issue a 90th anniversary edition of Ariel ( Amazon.co.uk ). (This year, 2019, is the 90th anniversary of the firm.) Two weeks later, on the 19th, both volumes of  The Letters of Sylvia Plath will be issued for the first time in paperback. Blessedly the same covers as for the hardback. Now. Your attention please. HarperCollins is not releasing paperback editions of  The Letters of Sylvia Plath . So if you want the new content, which will be the subject of a separate blog post on or about the 19th, then you will have to get the Faber edition. Book Depository ships internationally for free. If you are interested in books about  Sylvia Plath this fall is for you as there are two important books coming out. ...

Published today by the Cambridge University Press is Sylvia Plath In Context , edited by Tracy Brain ( Amazon.co.uk ). From the book blurb on CUP's website: Sylvia Plath in Context brings together an exciting combination of established and emerging thinkers from a range of disciplines. The book reveals Plath's responses to the writers she reads, her interventions in the literary techniques and forms she encounters, and the wide range of cultural, personal, artistic, political, historical and geographical influences that shaped her work. Many of these essays confront the specific challenges for reading Sylvia Plath today. Others evaluate her legacy to the writers who followed her. Reaching well beyond any simple equation in which biographical cause results in literary effect, all of them argue for a body of work that emerges from Plath's deep involvement in the world she inhabits. Situating Plath's writing within a wide frame of references that reach beyond any si...

Yesterday, in day 3 of the Symposium, David Trinidad's talk on the biographical references and sources to Plath's October poems was an inspired piece. For those that were there, I think we can all agree that we could have listened to David speak for about 17 more hours. Or more. Culled down from a large piece, David focused on the poems written after Hughes left Court Green including "Daddy" and "Eavesdropper" and "Lesbos", among others. An extremely careful and detailed work of art, David's essay was, quite well received, a highlight included a calendar layout of the month with the names of the poems written in on the days in which they were composed, and other significant events, as well as contextual photographs that are important to the poems including the photograph of Otto Plath standing at a blackboard, and photographs take by Gail Crowther of the home the Kane's in St. Ives (where Plath stayed the weekend of Ocober the 13th/14th), w...

The Plathosphere is anticipating Representing Sylvia Plath , a collection of essays on Plath edited by the estimable duo of Sally Bayley (Oxford University) and Tracy Brain (Bath Spa University). The publisher is Cambridge University Press and the publication date is looking like April or June 2011. The table of contents looks like this: Introduction: ‘Purdah’ and the Enigma of Representation by Sally Bayley and Tracy Brain Part I: Contexts Aesthetics and Ideology: Judging Plath’s Letters by Jonathan Ellis The Photographic Chamber of the Eye: Plath Photography, and the Post-Confessional Muse by Anita Helle ‘O the tangles of that old bed’: Fantasies of Incest and the ‘Daddy’ Narrative in Ariel by Lynda K. Bundtzen Plath and Torture: Literary and Cultural Contexts for Plath’s Use of the Holocaust by Steven Gould Axelrod Part II: Poetics and Composition ‘The Trees of the Mind are Black, The Light is Blue’: Sublime Encounters in Sylvia Plath’s Tree Poems by Sally Bayley Coming to Terms wi...

This is an event reminder that on 20 November, 2007, Tracy Brain will give a seminar titled "Representing Sylvia Plath". Brain spoke on this topic during the Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium, impressively weaving into her paper events and "representations" taking place during the conference. With nearly three weeks passing since the end of the Symposium and this talk, the evening promises to be even more informative. The Programme for the Autumn 2007 term of the MSS: Modern Manuscript Studies Seminar at the Institute of English Studies includes the following event: Speaker: Tracy Brain (Bath Spa University), "Representing Sylvia Plath" Date: 20 November 2007 Time: 17:30 - 19:00 Venue: Room NG14 The event will be held in the Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. Tracy Brain is the author of numerous articles on Sylvia Plath, as well as the book, The Other Sylvia Plath (Longman: 2001). If anyone who reads this blog attends, please feel free to pos...

The Programme for the Autumn 2007 term of the MSS: Modern Manuscript Studies Seminar at the Institute of English Studies includes the following event: Speaker: Tracy Brain (Bath Spa University), "Representing Sylvia Plath" Date: 20 November 2007 Time: 17:30 - 19:00 Venue: Room NG14 The event will be held in the Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. Tracy Brain is the author of The Other Sylvia Plath (Longman: 2001).

The two images to the below are of the last two stanzas in Sylvia Plath's poem "Point Shirley" which appeared in her first collection of poetry, The Colossus and other poems . The Colossus and other poems , like The Bell Jar , has three different first editions. There is the Heinemann edition of October 1960; the Knopf edition of May 1962; and the Faber edition of 1967. The monetary value of each declines with each subsequent publisher making the Heinemann both highly desirable and expensive, and the Faber edition less desirable and less expensive. Ariel , Crossing the Water , Winter Trees , and other later Plath books (excepting the abridged Journals) were exclusively published by Faber in England and Harper & Row (HarperCollins) in the America. The top image is from the first Knopf edition; the bottom is from the first Faber edition. Can you find the difference? The typographical error is almost unnoticeable. I've read the poem dozens of times but only ...

Jo Gill, editor of the 2006 Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath , also edited Modern Confessional Writing: New Critical Essays ( Routledge: 2005, ISBN: 0415339693). In the book, there are three essays that deal with Plath. They are: "Dangerous Confessions: the problem of reading Sylvia Plath biographically" by Tracy Brain "Confessing the Body: Plath, Sexton, Berryman, Lowell, Ginsberg and the gendered poetics of the 'real'" by Elizabeth Gregory "'Your Story. My Story': confessional writing and the case of Birthday Letters " by Jo Gill I am most of the way through Tracy Brain's essay and find it interesting; I am huge Brain fan and thoroughly enjoy and recommend her The Other Sylvia Plath . To my surprise, a review of The Restored Ariel that I wrote and published via The Sylvia Plath Forum is quoted! In the last few years, there has been a critical backlash against Plath and biography, due in part to the fictionalization of Plath ...