Last year I found, through Newspaper Archive online , more articles about Sylvia Plath's first suicide attempt; the search for her; and her discovery from the week of 24 August 1953. The Google Newspaper Archive project has long since stopped (those quitters!), which is a shame, but as we all well know, the search for Sylvia Plath continues... The seven new newspaper articles that I have found brings our total known number of articles up to 183. The articles are: "Object of Search." The Charleston Gazette . August 26, 1953: 1. [photograph of SP included] "College Senior Missing." The Chester (Pa.) Times . August 26, 1953: 2. [photograph of SP included] "Searchers Comb Woods for Smith College Girl." Corpus Christi Times . August 26, 1953: 16. "Missing Student Found." The Daily News (Newport, R.I.). August 26, 1952: 8. "Missing Smith Senior Found." The Times Record (Troy, N.Y.). August 27, 1953: 15. "Second Well...

Did you know that on August 22, 1961, Sylvia Plath was efficiently busy. Plath's busyness that day is briefly discussed in " These Ghostly Archives 5: Reanimating the Past ", a paper that I co-write with Gail Crowther. But to give some additional detail... On August 22, 1961: Plath was about nine days away from moving to Court Green... On August 22, 1961: Plath sent her drafts of her poem "Insomniac" to Eric Walter White. Collected Poems generically (generally) dates the poem to "May 1961"; however, Plath dated her final typed copy "May 23, 1961". Good to know. The letter and poetry drafts are held by the British Library in the "Cheltenham Festival prize poems" (ADD MS 52617). On August 22, 1961: Plath sent her drafts of her poem "Tulips" (variant title "Sickroom Tulips") to Jack Sweeney. This poem was written on March 18, 1961, a week or so after her release from hospital from having her appendix removed....

The Wellesley Townsman (formerly The Townsman has been largely digitized which, for a fan of Sylvia Plath, is a dream come true. As of August 2012 (when I found the site and first drafted this post) the images are big and freely downloadable, and the functionality of the website is pretty easy to use. The newspaper articles themselves were OCR'd which can lead to false hits, but beggars cannot be choosers and to be too critical might make it appear that I am not grateful, which I certainly am. The majority of the articles you will find merely mention Plath, but from a biographical standpoint, one gets the sense of some of her activities as a young girl, teenager, and young woman. The date range to look for is 1943 and on; there are fewer mentions after 1955, as one might expect as that was the last time Plath truly lived in Wellesley; though she often used her 26 Elmwood Road address for submitting her work when she was transitioning between apartments, cities, etc. One inte...

Currently on exhibit outside the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Neilson Library, level 3 at Smith College  is "Sylvia Plath Reads the Wife of Bath." ( There are other Plath-related exhibits on at Smith as well. ) The exhibition is based on the special studies research of Jaclyn Majewski (Smith Class of '13) and is open through September 8, 2013. The show includes Plath's annotated copy of The Poetical Works of Chaucer , journals, drawings, photographs, and early drafts of Plath's poems "Magi" and "Lady Lazarus," which was written on the back of a draft of The Bell Jar .

Like Sylvia Plath's "Mushrooms," HarperCollins "discretely, / very quietly" published their own 50th anniversary edition of The Bell Jar in June (the 11th, to be exact). Even though it is the 42nd year The Bell Jar has been available in this country AND they used the same text as their 25th anniversary edition, first published in 1996. But, who (other than me and maybe Elena Rebollo Cortés) is paying attention, really? You can buy this edition via Amazon and possibly, if there is such a thing anymore, at a real bookstore. Following the interesting guest post by Ms Cortés  and taking into consideration the stink that arose out of Faber's cover of their 50th anniversary edition in January...how do you take this one by HarperCollins? It is certainly far more conservative... Regarding the stink from earlier this year, here is a sample article and here is Faber's response . This 50th anniversary Harper edition cover does not call attention to i...

Today, Sotheby's auction house in London had, in Lot 31 , the copy of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim formerly owned by Sylvia Plath. The copy has Plath's bookplate, her underlinings, and her marginal annotations. There is also a note added by Ted Hughes. Estimates for the lot was that it would sell for £6,000-8,000. Plath's library is largely divided between her archives at Smith College (Mortimer Rare Book Room); Indiana University (Lilly Library); and Emory University (Robert W. Woodruff Library). In addition to those held by libraries and special collections, some copies of books formerly belonging to Plath are also held privately. Lot 31 of this auction just concluded. The book sold for a WHOPPING £12,500 /$19,357 / €14,760. Well, well above the high estimate. Go Plath! Earlier today, in another Sotheby's auction, a copy of the limited edition  Uncollected Poems  (Turret Books, 1965) sold as part of a big lot of books of "Twentieth-Century First and Limit...

On 10 July at Sotheby's, the Joseph Conrad collection Collection from the Library of the late Stanley J. Seeger - Part I goes for sale in London. Of the 193 lots, one in particular strikes the fancy of this Sylvia Plath-o-phile... Lot number 31 . The description of Sylvia Plath's copy of Lord Jim reads: "8vo. Sylvia Plath's copy, bearing her signed bookplate and extensively underlined with numerous annotations by her, additionally annotated by Ted Hughes ("I read this novel, this copy, aloud | to Sylvia, in the evenings, while | she was making her rag rug - 1962. | Ted Hughes" on rear free endpaper, original red brown cloth lettered in gilt on spine and upper cover, dust-jacket, extremities bumped and sunned, occasional scribbles in green felt-tip, significant loss to dust-jacket" The estimate is £6,000-8,000. News of this copy coming up for sale was featured in " Sylvia Plath's copy of Lord Jim on sale as part of huge Joseph Conrad a...