While not a full year in review, this blog post looks back from January to yesterday to summarize what went on in the world of Sylvia Plath as I lived it. My own experiences are limited and not exhaustive, but I hope this summary is in some way useful. There were two books to come out so far: Patricia Grisafi's Breaking Down Plath in February and The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath in April co-edited by Anita Helle, Amanda Golden, and Maeve O'Brien.  There is a Sylvia Plath Literary Festival taking place this coming October in Hebden Bridge that will also, likely be hybrid, which is being organized by Sarah Corbett and Ian Humphreys. Look to their Twitter accounts for all the latest information.  There was a major archive acquired by the University of Huddersfield collected by Mark Hinchliffe. Particularly strong in Ted Hughes materials, there are Sylvia Plath, Assia Wevill, and others represented in the collection.    A couple of blog posts here highlighted o...

The back-to-back auctions in June and July hosted by, respectively, Bonhams and Sotheby's , of items belonging to Frieda Hughes, and formerly belonging to either her mother Sylvia Plath, or father, Ted Hughes, were the focal points of this year in Sylvia Plath. The auctions featured very different items for each sale. The first was largely books published after Plath's death, both commercial books as well as remaining stock of limited editions. However there were some exceptions to that as there were items definitely owned by Plath in her lifetime. The ability to watch the auction live---and to bid---was something that is a truly magical experience. Nerve-wracking, too. The results of the Bonhams auction can be revisited here . From my point of view, the 24 total copies split between three lots of A Winter Ship , published by the Tragara Press in 1960, were the highlight here. (A 25th copy sold earlier this month via Bonhams, which was inadvertently left out of the June auctio...

So what did you think of Sylvia Plath in 2019? It seemed to be a year dominated by Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom , the short story published in the UK and the US in January and then which started appearing in translations. It is wonderful a newly published short story could kind of captivate its readers across the globe, which I think is a great sign that Plath--and her work--is in demand. As in the past, this is a look back at the year as I lived it. It seems I spent most of January publicizing the story on the blog, as well as the real Mary Ventura, who was a friend of Plath's in Wellesley in the mid-to-late 1940s. I spent most of the month of January, too, packing up my belongings and changing jobs and states. Sadly I still do not feel settled but, well, I will get there eventually. It is weird not being in Plath's backyard any longer after twenty years… But, you probably do not want to read my moaning, you want to read about Plath. At any rate, I think Mary Ve...

2018!!! To quote Tori Amos, it was a "pretty good year"!! In fact it seems the last few years have been filled with Sylvia Plath! That is a good thing. This is, as usual, a blog post recapping the year of Sylvia Plath as it appeared in this blog and in my life and I hope that somehow there is a confluence with how you perceived Plath in yours. In December 2017, I found out about the big Bonhams auction but was asked to stay quiet on it. Which was difficult, but necessary. So to keep that at bay I decided to post right off the bat about the 43 newly located articles on Plath's first suicide attempt . I just can't stop looking for Sylvia Plath. In January I helped to proof the Bonhams sales catalogue, found out that Smith College was going to get the Ruth Beuscher letters, and started the first round of proofing of the second volume of Plath's letters. I guess you could say that the year started out on fire! At the Belfast Plath conference in November 2017, I...