Since October 2013 , for American Archives Month, Sylvia Plath Info Blog has been highlighting various archives that hold Sylvia Plath archival materials. At the time twelve or so posts were planned, but that number has been far exceeded. It was certainly never imagined it would take this long to work through all the various collections, but in the process of looking, a number of additional places that hold documents were located that warranted inclusion. You can find all of them and more by searching the label " Sylvia Plath Collections " . But despite finding still more additional caches of archival holdings --a man must be allow his little secrets for a rainy day -- this is the final post in the series. Knowledge of all these archival collections does benefit all of Plath's readers, and with rare exception, copies can be obtained of these materials for a small fee. Some of these places and the documents they hold discussed over the last five months I had been hoarding ...

The William Heinemann Ltd archives, which are a part of Random House Group UK, hold materials by and relating to Sylvia Plath. Included among the documents are letters to, from, and about Plath, her book contracts ( The Colossus , 1960, and The Bell Jar , 1963). This post looks at the Heinemann archive materials both in the Random House Group UK archive and documents that are held in the Sylvia Plath Collection at Smith College. The bar at the York Minster Pub (now The French House), in March 2013 Plath signed her Heinemann contract for The Colossus on 10 February 1960 at the York Minster Pub (now The French House) at 49 Dean Street, Soho, London ( map ). She wrote proudly about the experience in a letter jointly addressed to her mother and brother the following day, 11 February: "picture (yesterday) your daughter/sister ... of enormous & impressive size, sailing into the notorious York Minster pub on Dean Street in Soho, just off Shaftesbury Avenue, about 12:15 & ...

The Rauner Special Collections at Dartmouth College holds the Papers of Philip Booth, (Collection MS-426) . Philip Booth was an American poet ( obit ) and nephew of Plath's Smith College physician/psychiatrist Dr. Marion Frances Booth. In her journals, Plath first mentions meeting Booth in April 1958 during her teaching year at Smith College (see page 368). Booth was somewhat instrumental in Plath and Hughes being offered spots at Yaddo being somehow involved with the admissions process (see this post about the Yaddo Records at the New York Public Library ). On 10 June 1959, Plath mentions trying to feel comfort from and learn from Booth's piles of rejection slips before the winning of a prize (page 493). In all, according to the index in Plath Unabridged Journals According to the Index, excluding the Notes, Booth is mentioned six times; his wife once; and his aunt Dr. Booth, twice. The Papers of Philip Booth holds, in Box 12, Folder 1, letters from Ted Hughes and Sylvia...

The Emmanuel d'Alzon Library at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, holds the letters Sylvia Plath wrote to Father Michael Carey between October 1962 and February 1963. Gail Crowther and I wrote about these letters a bit in our most recent "These Ghostly Archives" paper: " These Ghostly Archives 5: Reanimating the Past ". Some of the below was stated in this paper but this post should fill out the content of the letters... The letters are not "new". They were first published as an Appendix to Toni Saldívar's 1992 book Sylvia Plath: Confessing the Fictive Self (Peter Lang) on pages 201-206. However, at the time of the books publication Carey still held the letters, and not all of the letters were printed. To protect his interests, for example, Father Michael's name was redacted, and some of Plath's handwritten additions/postscripts were not included. Although the letters were published, I will give a brief paraphrase of each...

Kate Moses in 2003 ,  P.H. Davies in 2012 , Elizabeth Street , and  Graywolf Press , among others, have made Sylvia Plath's "Tomato Soup Cake." I am with Graywolf here on this, finding the concept "simultaneously repulsive and appealing". I will try it one day, I am sure... However, this blog post is about another Sylvia Plath recipe. In a letter Sylvia Plath wrote to her sister-in-law Olwyn Hughes from May 1959, she included a recipe for her heavenly sponge cake. Plath recommends making the cake in a funneled high cake pan, which my wife tells me is like a angel food cake pan (also known as a tube pan. If you are a fan of a certain Plath scholar you can use a bundt pan and achieve ... wait for it ... Bundt-zen! Sorry.). Plath even includes a drawing of the pan in the left margin of her typed letter. Being wholly culinarily uncoordinated, I begged (it was not pretty) my wife to try the recipe out. The ingredients you will need are: 6 separated eggs; 1½ c...

The Library at University of Wisconsin at Madison has the archive of the journal  Arts in Society . Sylvia Plath published three poems in an early issue of the serial (Volume 1, Number 2) in the  Fall of 1959 . The three poems were "Aftermath," "The Goring," and "Sculptor." And, brilliantly, they have made the back issues available digitally . Though it appears here (to the left), here is a link directly to the cover  in the context of the digital collection. And see images of the pages in which the poems appeared: Page 66  ("Aftermath" and "The Goring") &  Page 67  ("Sculptor"). All pages are downloadable as good quality PDF's, which is sweet. Does seeing these three poems here, together as a unit, give them a different context to their order --each appears in a different year, 1956; 1958; and 1959 respectively-- in Plath's Collected Poems ? Plath left "The Goring" out of The Colossus , is it weak...

Smith College holds photocopies of sheet music (covers only) formerly owned by Sylvia Plath. A note with these documents reads "Original sheet music in Newnham College, Cambridge Archives. Sheet music was left by Plath in her rooms at Newnham College, 1956 (?)." Four of the covers have Plath's signature; three have notes by Aurelia Plath. The original sheet music is now held by the Newnham College Archives, Cambridge, England. The titles of the sheet music that she owned and left at Newhnam are: 1) Apex Edition of Graded Albums for Piano ( WorldCat ) 2) Beethoven Moonlight Sonata ( WorldCat ) 3) C Bohm Favorite Compositions for the Piano * 4) Classic and Romantic Pianoforte Pieces ( WorldCat ) 5) Copland Scherzo Humoristique * ( WorldCat ) 6) Debussy La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin * ( WorldCat ) 7) Grieg Poetic Tone Pictures ( WorldCat ) 8) Oklahoma! ( WorldCat ) 9) Poulenc Mouvements Perpetuels * ( WorldCat ) 10) Progressive Pieces for Pianoforte ( World...