Sylvia Plath graduated Smith College with honors in June 1955. She had spent her senior year working on a special honors thesis which she titled: "The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevsky's Novels." Her originally submitted typescript is held by the Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College (a microfilm copy also exists). Additionally, a typescript carbon of the work, as well as her notes and note cards, are held in the "Smith College Memorabilia" (Box 11) of Plath mss. II at the Lilly Library, Indiana University ( a list of Plath's archival collections, with links, can be found here ). Plath's thesis is one of those documents that garners continual interest. And, in 1989 it was published in a limited edition by the Embers Handpress in Wales, UK. Currently there are no copies available through book sites such as ABEbooks.com , thus proving it is a highly collectible book. There are 25 copies held in libraries around the world per Wo...

Sylvia Plath wrote her senior thesis on Dostoyevsky called The magic mirror: A study of the double in two of Dostoevsky's novels . It was printed in a limited edition of 226 numbered copies by Embers Handpress, Rhiwargor, Llanwddyn, Powys, in 1989. Smith College holds the original as part of their Sylvia Plath Collection. Indiana University also holds some related materials including notes and note cards for the work. Sylvia Plath has also been the subject of well over a hundred theses and dissertations. I have been working on compiling a bibliography of these, mostly dissertations through a source I have via my graduate program. I will post it to this blog in the next few days I hope. Some of these works have gone on to be published, for example Judith Kroll's brilliant Chapters in a mythology: The poetry of Sylvia Plath. The disseration was titled Chapters in a mythology: The poetic vision of Sylvia Plath . The book was published in 1976 by Harper & Row with the slightl...