We are half way through the year just about and perhaps this blog post should have come earlier. However, with the recent publication of an important new book about Ted Hughes, let us take a look at the scheduled publications this year... Ted Hughes in Context , edited by Terry Gifford, was published recently on 21 June 2018 by Cambridge University Press. This collection of essays represents some of the most up-to-date explorations into Ted Hughes's work and life by leading Hughes scholars. Some names are familiar, some are new, which is exciting. It is an expensive volume, but one that I feel will be worth every single penny. It appears as though Faber is reissuing a bunch of books this autumn and winter by Ted Hughes too including How the Whale Became and Other Tales and The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales on 4 October and Collected Animal Poems (four volumes) and Season Songs on 3 January 2019. In the Sylvia Plath world, you may be living under the stones in...

As I did last year with Sylvia Plath's High School and Smith College scrapbooks, I wanted to get a catalog of the items in Ted Hughes' publications scrapbook help at Emory University. The scrapbook was started and probably largely put together by Plath; however there are a few post-Plath entries here so it is clearly something Hughes, his sister, or possibly Assia Wevill continued for a short while. I am grateful to the staff at the Rose Library at Emory for their assistance with this project, as well as to Amy S. Li for her assistance as well. The original scrapbook is very fragile and closed for researcher use, understandably. However, there are two sets of photocopies that are available. I worked with two sets of photographs of the scrapbook, one labelled "chronological" and the other as "facing pages". I have not (yet!) visited Emory but desperately want to so as such I feel slightly less connected to this scrapbook. However, I hope the informatio...

This morning I noticed on Amazon.co.uk that the Faber & Faber cover for The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963 was displaying. So, I guess that means it is alright to show it here and elsewhere and let you all start thinking about it, discussing it, offering opinions, and everything else we are free to do with the information. So, here are the Faber and HarperCollins covers side by side. And for a reminder, here are the covers for the first volume. All links accessed: 11 June 2018

Sylvia Plath wrote her most famous villanelle on 21 February 1953 about Myron "Mike" Lotz, of Yale, whom she met over the Thanksgiving holiday in November 1952. I suspect many of us have been in that position before about a love interest; and in fact maybe some of you feel this degree of beautifully painful longing waiting for the next exciting Sylvia Plath Info Blog post? Right… Anyway, Plath sent the poem off to The New Yorker and Harper's . A typescript copy of "Mad Girl’s Love Song" held by Lilly Library, probably sent by Plath to her mother in her letter dated the same day of composition, includes the following note typed at the top: "this one had the honor of being inspired by one myron lotz…" ( Letters of Sylvia Plath , 567). The poem has quite an interesting publication history. "Mad Girl's Love Song" was first published in the Smith Review (Spring 1953). It then appeared in the August 1953 issue of Mademoiselle . Made...

Just a friendly blog post today to let you know that The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963  was sent off recently to the printers! This is true the point of no return. You can pre-order the Faber UK edition via Amazon.co.uk and the HarperCollins US edition via Amazon.com . If it is free international shipping you fancy, give Book Depository a shot: Faber edition ; HarperCollins edition . All links accessed: 21 and 24 May 2018

I recently learned (or rather was reminded) that two of Sylvia Plath's poems and a photograph of her were printed in an anthology in 1963, just a few months after her death. Two poems and a photo of Ted Hughes were included, too. This book and the poems are not listed in Stephen Tabor's Analytical Bibliography . The book is The Modern Poets: An American-British Anthology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963). It was edited by John Malcolm Brinnin and Bill Read and includes photographs by Rollie McKenna. Brinnin would have known McKenna for years as she famously photographed his Welsh buddy, the poet Dylan Thomas. And McKenna photographed Plath and Hughes in Boston sometime during the Boston year in 1958-1959. A review of the book, "Handsomest of Poetry Anthologies", appeared in the Boston Globe on 19 May 1963, next to the article "Anne Sexton Plans Tour of Europe: Commitment Necessary To Be Poet". The two Hughes poems are "Hawk Roosting" and ...

Sylvia Plath's colleague at Smith College, Marlies Kallmann Danziger, passed away in March 2018 . She taught at Smith when Plath was a student and a colleague in the department of English at Smith College in the 1957-1958 academic year. This copy of the Grecourt Review 1 from November 1957, which prints Plath's poem "All the Dead Dears", may have been her's as it bears the ownership inscription "Miss Kallman" on the cover (bottom left). I acquired this copy back in 2012 and never did anything with it (I had always meant to present it on the blog but just never did; got distracted by a little project on her Letters ). But, having just learned of her passing, I felt it was worth writing about now. Danziger appears in Plath's journals in several entries (12 January 1958, 22 January 1958, 8 February 1958, 27 February 1958, 5 May 1958 (twice), and 19 May 1958). Kallman apparently lived in Albright House and had her office in Library 52, accord...