In March, the Beinecke Library opened the recently processed collection of the Lois Ames Collection of Sylvia Plath. The finding aid is online here , and there is a convenient option to make a PDF which is, in some ways, easier to read. In my earlier post last year about the acquisition, as well as in this post from 2023 , I commented on a comment made by Mrs Plath about how Ames "stole both materials (manuscripts of Sylvia's) and snapshots from me." So I was fascinated to work with the papers on 23 and 24 March 2026 to see if I could make sense of Mrs Plath's claim, and, as well, see the materials that represent the start of the industry of Sylvia Plath.  What I encountered, though, was an enormous absence.  There are two boxes of correspondence, most of which feels like it is drafts of letters Ames wrote as well as some carbons of letters sent. There are incoming letters, but the majority of these are from Ted Hughes, Mrs Plath, Olwyn Hughes, and Harper & Row, ...

The last full day! I am sad but it has been a productive experience. A massive number of photographs to review, process, read, and assimiliate into the existing bank of knowledge on Sylvia Plath and the other figures that play in the story. And I want to say it is a real honor to have gotten to work with the papers the very week they opened for research and an absolute and sincere joy to relate some of the things I have seen to you. Thank you so much for reading.  I began day four working with Box 16, which I could not finish up on Thursday. Box 16 is Aurelia Schober Plath's papers, Diaries and notebooks. Fascinating documents. These consist of diaries she kept on trips to England and Europe as well as to write about her grandchildren visiting the US. It picks up from Box 15 which has earlier diaries and fragments up to the rather infamous summer of 1962 which has much shorthand at the crucial points, as well as pages that had been ripped out.  One of my favorite things in Box...

After leaving the Beinecke yesterday, I thought it might be poetic, or perhaps even prosaic, to talk a short walk up Prospect Street. Plath stayed at 238 Prospect Street and writes about it in The Bell Jar . During Esther Greenwood's visit to Buddy Willard, they "walked very slowly" in "the cold, black, three o'clock wind" from downtown New Haven "to the house where I was sleeping in the living-room on a couch that was too short because it only cost fifty cents a night instead of two dollars like most of the other places with proper beds" (1963, 63). It was dark when I got there as the library closed after sunset. This house is directly opposite Yale's chemistry facilities, and so you can imagine I wanted to go all the way, just like Buddy wanted to and visit the chemistry lab. It was, of course, famoulsy behind the Chemistry Lab where Buddy first kissed Esther Greenwood, chapped lips and all. There has been appreciable construction since I was...

It is nearly the end of day two here and I am still kind of processing what I saw on day one. This morning, for example, I read the letters from Assia Wevill to Mrs. Plath over coffee before the library opened and I am still not recovered. One of the items I was most excited to see is in Folder 1 of Box 14, Plath's personal papers. In this folder were sihlouettes dating from 1946 and 1956. The 1956 one was my focus as I remember all the time about Plath's writing about it in her journals. She did so on 30 March 1956 when she was pining for Richard Sassoon, enamoured of Ted Hughes, but spending a lot of time with Tony in advance of meeting up with Gordon! She wrote: 'Tony and I walked about and looked at paintings until a small man asked if he could cut my silouhette "comme un cadeau", so I stood in the middle of the square in the middle of Montmartre and gazed at the brilliant restaurants in the middle of a gathering crowd which ohed and ahed and which was just wh...

Snow, sleet, and rain greeted me today on my drive to New Haven. I have been to this city only one time before, about 20 or so years ago on a day trip to see the Plath Sites. Or, the Richard Norton sites, such as my 2001 or 2002 self knew. I was not impressed. Anyway, the atrocious weather may have been a blessing as the George Washington Bridge was sans  traffic. As was every other road I travelled to get here until I got here. The Merritt Parkway--a road which Sylvia Plath herself took on excursions to Manhattan--was fine. A few back-ups on hills, because apparently driving uphill in Connecticut is just as hard as running up them.  The last few miles seemed to take the most amount of time. Ah---anticipation.  The Beienecke Library recently opened the Plath Family Papers. Word or mouth was that there was nothing shocking or revolutionary in them, but that is not really what I am looking for as I look through them. Maybe I do not even know what it is I am looking for, but...

The Beinecke Library has published the Plath Family Papers finding aid .   There is, as can be imagined, a lot to unpack with the finding aid and a cursory review of it also indicates that there are things within it that need to be cleaned up and corrected.  But it is an enticing textual and organizational look at the papers that comprise the collection.  There are many letters from Plath to various people which is exciting. These include, without a doubt, the original letters Plath sent to her brother Warren. The Lilly Library has copies. The letters to Mrs. Plath are itemized, but those to her brother are not (at the time of writing). So it is unclear at the moment if there are more letters. Researchers will be able to access the collection in the first week of December. Undoubtedly there will be much more to discuss in time.  In case you missed it, Yale issued a press release on 7 Novembe r about the collection. All links accessed 21 November 2025. Revised 24...

Yale's Beinecks Library has been busy of late in the Sylvia Plath archive world. The Beinecke acquired recently the Lois Ames collection of Sylvia Plath from James Cummings of New York.  Ames passed away in 2022 . The papers are unprocessed, but is comprised of three boxes with correspondence, writings, printed material, research material, photographs, and other papers compiled for a biography of Sylvia Plath.  You may remember from this blog post back in 2023 that Mrs Plath wrote a friend that Ames stole materials from the house at Elmwood Road. But, to reiterate,  "I forgot about some of the materials I acquired over the years, such as this nugget from a letter in April 1983 that Aurelia Schober Plath wrote to a friend Mary Ann Montgomery: 'Lois Ames never wrote a biography, although she had a grant to do so, interviewed me during a whole summer and stole both materials (manuscripts of Sylvia's) and snapshots from me' (Montgomery mss, Lilly). Holy highl...

In February, I posted on the acquisition of the "Plath Family papers" by the Beinecke Library at Yale. Due to the inquisitiveness of Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, we have learned that the papers will open in the next few weeks (this Autumn).  That's it. That's the post. More information perhaps when there is some to share.  In the meantime, last Friday, the 12th of September, saw the publication by the LSU Press of Julie's most recent book Lives Revised:  Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath .  Congratulations, Julie! All links accessed 18 September 2025.

I am grateful to Amanda Golden for letting me know the other day that Yale University's Beinecke Library has acquired two Plath family collections. The basic archival accession records are linked below. Main collection  (21 boxes) Addition  (2 boxes) There is not much to go on at this point in time, but the main collection includes "Correspondence, writings, photographs, printed material, artwork, personal papers, records, realia, and other papers by or relating to Sylvia Plath and the Plath family." And the addition has "Books, correspondence, photographic prints, audiovisual material, stamp collection, and other papers created by, or, related to Sylvia Plath and the Plath family." It may be a year or so before the collection is open to research; however, some parts will be closed until 1 January 2059. There are possibly other criteria that may allow for the closed materials to be made available. In addition to holding Sylvia Plath materials, there are likely d...

Following the sale last year of all my books by and about Sylvia Plath (including works by and about Ted Hughes, Frieda Hughes and Assia Wevill, too), this blog post is to announce that more materials are now at Utica University. I am grateful to Distinguished Professor of English Gary Leising for getting a Plath course permanently a part of the curriculum, and to James Teliha, Dean of the Library & Learning Commons, for their willingness to acquire these items.  This collection of materials consists of the following: Archival copies of 172 poems (plus a few other poem-related things); Archival copies of 177 prose works; Archival copies of letters to, from, and about Sylvia Plath (more than 1,890 items); Photocopies of periodical and early book appearances ( view list here ); A few odds and ends like copies of unpublished manuscripts (biography, memoir, etc.); A digital collection on a flash drive of 455 photos of SP; and 296 Printed photographs I took of Plath's houses and ot...

In November 2010 I visited for a day the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland, College Park, to work with the Frances McCullough papers. Recently browsing through the notes made there, I was reminded about a "Did you know..." post that I wanted to write. So it only took me 12 years... The UK edition of Plath's Winter Trees  was published on 27 September 1971. The American edition was issued 51 weeks later on 20 September 1972.  In working with the proofs of the book that are there, I noticed some additional text in the preliminary pages of one of these editions. Did you know... the US edition prints a caution opposite the "Note" by Ted Hughes which is absent from the Faber counterpart? Faber Harper & Row CAUTION Lawless Americans!

A friend recently let me know about a typescript page of some unidentified, untitled prose of Plath's wondered if I had seen it before. The answer was no, not really. However, after reading said typescript and Googling a random phrase, I learned that it was in fact published in the 1982 abridged edition of The Journals of Sylvia Plath (published in the US only).  Said text was printed in the Cambridge years section (1955-1957) under the heading of "Novel" on pages 150-51 of the abridged edition. It followed a subsection entitled "All the Dead Dears" and a "Poem" idea on page 149. The interlude from Plath's actual journals continues with the rather famous 25 February 1956 entry "Hello, hello. It is about time I sat down and described some things: Cambridge, people, ideas..." (151). For those with the unabridged Journals, the "All the Dead Dears" notes appears in an appendix on page 579; and the "Poem" idea a bit latae...

Because I had a rare moment of prescience in 2017, I saved all the web material related to Ken Lopez's failed attempt to sell Harriet Rosenstein's archive . Having access to the shoddy inventory proved useful. In fact, it was a source of hours of conversation and speculation with David Trinidad between 2017 and the archives opening at Emory in January 2020. In particular, the folder of Elizabeth Sigmund's papers were of interest. On the day the photographer I hired took pictures of the Sigmund folder , the much dreamed about and discussed files became a reality. That is, until the syncing up problems happened.  This is what Lopez wrote: Elizabeth Compton-Sigmund - large file, including correspondence, notes from over Sylvia’s desk, SP drawing (copies) Original Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath letter - 7/62, 3 pp. holograph by Ted Hughes, one page holograph by Sylvia Plath copy of a letter from Assia Wevill to Sylvia Plath, 1 pg. re tapestry 2 pp. holograph notes; 3 pp. ALS; I...

The archival finding aid is many things. It is a textual map.  It serves as a basic outline of a collection. It is also a key. It provides information, sometimes minute (item level) and sometimes very broad and general.  The Plath mss II finding aid is a wonderful document which was created by the Lilly Library in 1977, the year of the collection's acquisition from Aurelia Schober Plath. It has been online for as long as I can remember and may be one of my most frequented web pages.  When I was rummaging... I mean... when I was on my recent very serious research trip which helped to put the finishing touches on my current book project (the final manuscript of which was submitted recently), I went through boxes 8-15 methodically, folder by folder, and for the most part page by page. I spent the most time in boxes 13 through 15, perhaps, for no other reason than it was material with which I barely spent much time reading on previous research trips.  In box 13, folders...

On 3 June 1953, sixty-nine years ago today, Sylvia Plath was at work as the Guest Managing Editor at 575 Madison Avenue in New York at the offices of Mademoiselle magazine. Plath's calendar, held by the Lilly Library, indicates that her schedule that day was included taking the "Last word pix" in Central Park. The "Last Word" was some text Plath wrote to accompany the photograph of all 20 guest editors in star-shape. Plath is, famously perhaps, at the top of the formation. Janet Wagner is holding Plath's right hand. Carol LeVarn is the blonde on the far left.  The names captioned below follow the star from Plath's right hand counter-clockwise to Plath's left. Anne Shawber (number 9) is the bottom left young woman with her right leg out, and Dinny Lane (number 13) is the bottom right woman with her left leg out. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around... The far right is Margaret Affleck (17). This photograph was taken at the Bethesda Terr...