The Lilly Library From 16-19 March, I was at the Lilly Library, Indiana University at Bloomington, working with the Sylvia Plath archives there doing reference leg work and inquiry for the Letters of Sylvia Plath project. In the past, I have made nightly updates on the materials with which I worked, but I found this too time consuming for the kind of work I was doing this time around. In the process of being there, I was able to look through the majority of all the boxes and folders in Plath mss II; as well as dabbling a little in other, smaller collections  such as the Lameyer mss; Plath mss IV; Plath mss VI; and one book from her library, Christopher Fry's 1950 play The Lady's Not for Burning . The trip was very successful and rewarding, and the staff, from the Curator of Manuscripts Cherry Williams to Reference Librarian David K. Frasier and Public Services Assistant Zach Downey, and all the additional library staff who paged materials, brought them to me, took them aw...

To be sung to the tune of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back": I like rare books and I cannot lie! The mass market paperback can just die... Rare books can sometimes be like watching sports. In sports, on any given day you may see something that has never been done before. In the case of books, you might suddenly see a copy of something that you did not know existed. In December, while browsing around ABEbooks.com , this very thing happened. One of the more memorable and famous books from the 20th century, which is celebrating 50 years of publication this coming March, was Sylvia Plath's Ariel . A copy of Plath's Ariel , a Faber first edition, second impression, recently came across my view. But it was unusual. The dust wrapper was different. The first editions that I have seen and held have three bands of color on the face and spine. Blue at the top taking up the majority of the space with the words ARIEL  in yellow, as if cut out; then that yellow in the middl...

Sylvia Plath has a reputation. In fact, she has many reputations. Sylvia Plath is most widely known for her life and her death; her novel The Bell Jar , and her poems, most notably those in Ariel but also for those works published in 1981 in The Collected Poems for which Plath did, after all, win the Pulitzer Prize. In recent years -- say since 1987 -- Plath's life has been the focus of attention as a number biographies have been published: and most of those with some drama or contention surrounding it. And in 2000, with the publication of her full journals, again the focus was displaced somewhat from her creative writing and onto her life. In some strange and perverse way, Plath's reputation --poetic and otherwise -- is because of Hughes, just as Hughes' own fast ascent as a poet of world-renowned can be credited to Plath who effectively and efficiently got his poems first in a wide array of reputable and international magazines, but also in book form. Fifty years a...

On Sunday 2 March 1958, Sylvia Plath wrote a letter to . . . her mother! I know! #Shocking. Wholly omitted from Letters Home  but available to read at the Lilly Library, the typed letter was written on the now famous pink Smith College Memorandum paper. Among other things, Plath writes that the night before --1 March-- was spent lazily seeing two films: one on Goya and another on a documentary on a bullfighter. The film on Spanish painter Francisco De Goya ( info ) was The Glory of Goya  (1950) and featured music by Andres Segovia, a musician Plath saw perform at Smith College as an undergraduate on 10 April 1954. The documentary on the bullfighter was the 1956 Mexican film Torero!  ( YouTube ) about the Mexican bullfighter Luis Procuna ( info ). The film on Goya is interesting as within three weeks Plath was on Spring Break, writing nearly a poem a day and all largely influenced by art, specifically modern art. Also this creative outbreak was inspired by ...

In 1 November 2014, I posted on "Collecting Sylvia Plath" . This post was originally part of that, but I decided to break it out for a special occasion. That occasion is today, just after the 52nd anniversary of Sylvia Plath's death. The following document was acquired from The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye, and was something also formerly belonging to long-time BBC producer Fred Hunter ( obit ; another obit ). Truly this is a piece of ephemera: a single-sided leaflet produced by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, for a "Sylvia Plath Memorial Evening" which was (to be) held on 29 April. The full text reads: INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS 17 Dover Street W 1 Sylvia Plath Memorial Evening The ICA are arranging a memorial evening for Sylvia Plath on thursday, april 29th at 8.15 pm The speakers will be Ian Hamilton and M L Rosenthal and Al Alvarez will be in the Chair. The evening will be illustrated with recordings of Sylvia Plat...

The BBC has recently launched something called BBC Genome (currently in BETA). The site "contains the BBC listings information which the BBC printed in Radio Times between 1923 and 2009. You can search the site for BBC programmes, people, dates and Radio Times editions." As you might have guessed, I searched for … Sylvia Plath . I also searched Ted Hughes and Frieda Hughes . The website offers two major ways to access listing information. One is a blanket, standard search (with advanced searching available, too). Another is to browse the separate issues of Radio Times (and by doing so, you can see a select few of the actual covers -- greedily I would love to see them all). I like both methods, but have to admit it is easier to search the Radio Times listings if I know the exact date for the broadcast in which I am interested. For example, Sylvia Plath's "Three Women" was broadcast on 19 August 1962 , and thus appeared in the 16 August 1962 issue of ...

The Special Collections and University Archives of Vanderbilt University's Jean and Alexander Heard Library The Peter Taylor Papers (MSS. 435) holds one letter from Sylvia Plath to Taylor's wife, the poet Eleanor Ross Taylor. The letter is held in Series 1: Correspondence, Incoming Correspondence, Box 4, Folder 12: Page - Plath. The handwritten letter is simply dated Friday by Plath, but the postmark on the retained envelope indicates that it was written and sent from London NW1 on Friday 27 January 1961. However, there is a faint, ghostly postmark stamp underneath from a Kensington post office, dated 1 February 1961 (a Wednesday). I wonder if there was a delay in delivering the letter? 9 Princess Street, London NW1 Speaking of postmarks... a short diversion. Did you know that when Plath lived in Primrose Hill -- at both 3 Chalcot Square and 23 Fitzroy Road -- her post office was located at 9 Princess Street ( map )? The current post office is at 91 Regents Park R...