The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

by Sylvia Plath

  *Boris Pasternak and Michael Harari, Poems 1955–1959 (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1960).

  *E. E. Cummings, Selected Poems, 1923–1958 (London: Faber & Faber, 1960).

  *John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells (London: John Murray, 1960).

  *Brian Higgins, The Only Need (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1960); D. J. Enright, Some Men are Brothers (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960).

  *Probably Sylvia Plath, ‘The Lucky Stone’, published as ‘The Perfect Place’. See SP to ASP, 26–9 September 1961. SP set the story in Whitby, England, which she visited in August 1960.

  *Probably Sylvia Plath, ‘A Winter’s Tale’; held by Smith College.

  *Mrs Molesworth, The Cuckoo Clock (1877).

  *P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins; first published in 1934.

  *Sylvia Plath, American Poetry Now (Hull: University of Hull, 1961); a supplement of the Critical Quarterly.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Frog Autumn’ and ‘Metaphors’, in Kenneth Allott (ed.), Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse 1918–60, 2nd edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1962): 388–90. In his introduction Allott writes, ‘and I have claimed Sylvia Plath as English because she is married to an English poet and settled in this country, although she was born in Boston and the main literary influence on her work is John Crowe Ransom’ (16). SP’s copy held by Lilly Library.

  *Probably Robert Graves, The Penny Fiddle: Poems for Children (London: Cassell, 1960).

  *TH spoke at Mexborough Grammar School on 18 July 1961. An article, ‘Hawthornden Prize Winner at Mexborough Speech Day’, ran in the South Yorkshire Times on 22 July 1961. SP and TH arrived half an hour late due to car troubles, and the article printed a photograph of SP and TH with two students. SP assisted in handing out awards.

  *Letter misdated by SP.

  *Letter misdated by SP.

  *This sentence added by SP in the left margin.

  *Peter Dickinson, ‘Some poets’, Punch (7 December 1960): 829.

  *The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903), The Tailor of Gloucester (1903), and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904).

  *It does not appear these reviews were either written or printed.

  *Bernard Bergonzi, ‘The Ransom Note’, The Guardian (25 November 1960): 9. Smith College holds two clippings of Bergonzi’s review; one from the above cited appearance and another from the Guardian Weekly (1 December 1960): 11.

  *Thom Gunn won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1959, the year before TH.

  *Probably ‘Writing a Novel – Beginning’, Listening and Writing, BBC Home Service (Schools), (20 October 1961); and ‘Capturing Animals’, Listening and Writing, BBC Home Service (Schools), (6 October 1961).

  *SP worked part-time for The Bookseller, 13 Bedford Square, London W.C.1. The spring issue was published on 11 February 1961; TH’s Meet My Folks! is mentioned on page 427.

  *Possibly Ted Hughes, ‘The Gentle Art’, The World of Books, Home Service (25 February 1961). Between 1961 and 1964, TH’s children’s programmes were broadcast by the BBC Home Service and published as Poetry in the Making: A Handbook for Writing and Teaching (London: Faber & Faber, 1967).

  *American poet Eleanor Ross Taylor (1920–2011); married to American author Peter Taylor (1917–94).

  *Date supplied from postmark.

  *SP addressed the letter to 25 Kensington Gate, London.

  *SP read ‘Mushrooms’; TH read ‘Pike’. Both poems and the interview released on The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath (London: British Library Publishing, 2010). The BBC Written Archives Centre holds an initial transcription of the recording, which has a brief introduction by Leeming, many lines of conversation cut from the final broadcast, and TH reading ‘Bullfrog’. It is unclear how the decision was made, or who made it, to read ‘Pike’ instead of ‘Bullfrog’.

  *English novelist and poet Emily Brontë (1818–48).

  *Theodore Roethke, Words for the Wind (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958). SP’s copy, inscribed by TH for Christmas 1960 and later by Roethke, appeared at auction via Bonhams on 21 March 2018.

  *Beatrice O’Connell Roethke (c. 1926– ); married 1953.

  *Anne Sexton, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960).

  *Robert Lowell, from the front jacket: ‘Swift lyrical openness . . . an almost Russian abundance and accuracy. Her poems stick in my mind. I don’t see how they can fail to make the great stir they deserve.’

  *Anne Sexton, ‘Elegy in the Classroom’, the penultimate poem in part 1 of To Bedlam and Part Way Back.

  *American poet Maxine Kumin, (1925–2014).

  *Maxine Kumin, ‘Fraulein Reads Instructive Rhymes’, New Yorker (14 January 1961): 30.

  *Heinrich Hoffman, Struwelpeter (1845), a popular German children’s book.

  *Sexton’s copy of The Colossus (Heinemann, uncorrected proof) held by the Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Also inscribed by George Starbuck.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Tulips’, Poetry at the Mermaid, held at the Mermaid Theatre, London, 16–23 July 1961; SP read ‘Tulips’ to an audience on 17 July 1961.

  *The eleven other contributors were Thomas Blackburn, ‘En Route’; Austin Clarke, ‘Forget Me Not’; Michael Hamburger, ‘Anachronisms’; Ted Hughes, ‘My Uncle’s Wound’; Patrick Kavanagh, ‘The Gambler: A Ballet with Words’; Norman MacCaig, ‘Snow in Princes Street’; Richard Murphy, ‘The Progress of a Painter’; William Plomer, ‘Reading in the Garden’; Hal Summers, ‘Songs from a Revue’; R. S. Thomas, ‘Not So’; and Laurence Whistler, ‘The Nine-Day City’.

  *John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, performed at the Aldwych Theatre, 49 Aldwych, London.

  *English actress Dame Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft (1907–91).

  *Possibly SP’s former colleague Stanley Sultan, who joined the English faculty at Clark University in 1959.

  *Warren Plath presented a paper entitled ‘Automatic Sentence Diagraming’ at the International Conference on Machine Translation of Languages and Applied Language Analysis in Teddington, 5–8 September 1961.

  *See Phoebe Adams to SP, 17 February 1961; (photocopy) held by Yale University. Sylvia Plath, ‘Words for a Nursery’, Atlantic Monthly 208 (August 1961): 66.

  *SP had written, recently, ‘Parliament Hill Fields’ (11 February); ‘Whitsun’, ‘Zoo Keeper’s Wife’, and ‘Face Lift’ (14 February); ‘Morning Song’ (19 February); ‘Barren Woman’ (21 February); and ‘Heavy Women’ (26 February).

  *‘A Poet Jokes About His Folks’, Sunday Times (26 March 1961): Magazine 37. Only three poems were published: Ted Hughes, ‘My Sister Jane’, ‘My Grandpa’, and ‘My Brother Bert’.

  *Possibly from Elizabeth Sigmund. Elizabeth Sigmund (1928–2017) and David Compton (1930– ); lived at the time at Tythecott Mill, Tythecott, Buckland Brewer, Devon; married in 1952 and divorced c. 1967; three children: Margaret (1951– ), Hester (1954– ), and James (1959– ); Elizabeth married William Sigmund in 1973.

  *In response to Leeming’s query of ‘How – how much room have you got to live in?’ SP said, ‘We’re dreaming of a house where I can shout to Ted from one end to the other and he won’t be able to hear me, but I don’t know how far away that is.’

  *John Whiting, The Devils, performed at the Aldwych Theatre, London.

  *English writer Aldous Huxley (1894–1963); his The Devils of Loudun (1952).

  *English Jacobean playwrights Thomas Middleton (c. 1580–1627) and William Rowley (c. 1585–1626); their The Changeling, performed at the Royal Court Theatre.

  *Swedish film director and producer Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007).

  *Everyman Cinema, 5 Holly Bush Vale, Hampstead, London.

  *Howard Moss to SP, 24 February 1961; held by Smith College. The first-reading contract was signed by vice-president R. Hawley Truax. W. S. Merwin had written to the New Yorker asking if they could do anything to help out SP and TH by offering one of them a first reading contract; see W. S. Merwin to Howard Moss, 19 February 1961; held by New York Public Library.


  *English crime novelist Agatha Christie (1890–1976).

  *See ‘The Inmate’ in ‘Appendix 10’, Journals of Sylvia Plath: 599–608.

  *See Letters of Sylvia Plath, Vol. 1, 1095.

  *University College Hospital.

  *Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (London).

  *SP likely meant Welwyn Garden City, a town in Hertfordshire, approximately twenty miles north of London.

  *Possibly Merwin’s poem ‘John Otto’, The New Yorker (29 March 1958): 30; this begins: ‘John Otto of Brunswick, ancestor . . .’

  *Memorials are placed in the St Pancras garden such as for Jane Grundy (1784–1854) and the philosopher William Godwin (1756–1836).

  *SP bracketed the three measurements by hand and added this sentence.

  *The clipping is no longer with the letter.

  *British biographer and academic David Cecil (1902–86). The Hawthornden Prize is awarded for ‘imaginative literature’ to a writer under the age of forty-one.

  *Dom Moraes, A Beginning (London: Parton Press, 1957) won the Hawthornden Prize in 1958.

  *English writer Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010); his The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (London: W. H. Allen, 1959) won the Hawthornden Prize in 1959; his Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (London: W. H. Allen, 1958) was made into a film in 1960.

  *S. Ary and M. Gregory, The Oxford Book of Wild Flowers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960). SP’s copy, signed and inscribed by TH, appeared at auction via Bonhams on 21 March 2018.

  *Dorothy Kunhardt, Pat the Bunny (1940).

  *TH added a note at the bottom of the letter, which has not been transcribed. TH thanked Booth for a poem and commented on his editorial role and the kind of poetry he was reading for the PEN anthology. He wrote about SP’s recent progression in her poetry, likely, he concluded, as a result of her recent illness and appendectomy.

  *A number of poems in Booth’s second collection, The Islanders (New York: Viking Press, 1961), are on the theme of insomnia. See specifically ‘The Total Calm’ (pp. 31–2), ‘If It Comes (33–4), ‘Night Notes on an Old Dream’ (35), and ‘The Owl’ (36–7).

  *James Michie to SP, undated (c. March 1961), telling SP that Alfred A. Knopf wanted to publish The Colossus if she left out one poem ‘that they think is too Roethkesque’; held by Smith College.

  *Adrienne Rich, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems, 1954–1962 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).

  *Adrienne Rich was the recipient of the 1961–2 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship Fund which enables a US-born poet to spend one year outside North America in any country they feel will enhance their work.

  *Adrienne Rich was awarded a Guggenheim in 1959, her second (the first was in 1952). Rich’s husband Arthur Conrad was also a 1959 recipient (for economics).

  *Maxine Kumin published five children’s books in 1961–2.

  *Booth was awarded the Guggenheim in 1958.

  *SP’s and FH’s presentation copy, signed and inscribed by TH, appeared at auction via Bonhams on 21 March 2018.

  *British poet and editor Alan Ross (1922–2001); Ross was editor of London Magazine from 1961 until his death.

  *Possibly for Ted Hughes, ‘The Harvesting’, London Magazine 1 (April 1961): 41–7.

  *‘Wednesday, March April! 5’ appears in the original.

  *Polly Flinders was a brand of children’s clothing.

  *According to SP’s chequebook, they ordered eighteen copies on 14 April 1961, fifteen copies on 13 June 1961, and an additional six on 25 August 1961.

  *The BBC Written Archives Centre has a contract for this programme dated 4 April 1961; SP and TH were to be paid 10 guineas for the appearance; SP’s name has been crossed out in pencil. No known recording is extant.

  *English theatre and film director Peter Hall (1930–2017).

  *French film actress Leslie Caron (1931– ); divorced 1965.

  *American editor and writer Judith Jones (1924–2017).

  *Judith Jones to SP, 29 March 1961; held by Smith College.

  *SP’s ‘The Stones’ was not published in the US until it appeared in Knopf’s edition of The Colossus (1962); the two poems from the sequence that were published were ‘Flute Notes From a Reedy Pond’ and ‘Witch Burning’.

  *Sylvia Plath, The Colossus & Other Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962); published on 14 May 1962; excluded the following poems printed in the Heinemann edition: ‘Metaphors’, ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, ‘Maudlin’, ‘Ouija’, ‘Two Sisters of Persephone’, ‘Who’, ‘Dark House’, ‘Maenad’, ‘The Beast’, and ‘Witch Burning’.

  *Jones wrote to SP, ‘Stanley Kunitz, who read the collection, suggested to me that he thought it could be cut down considerably.’

  *See SP to ASP, 26 October 1960.

  *SP included a copy of the Heinemann edition of The Colossus with the inscription: ‘For Theodore Roethke with much love and immense admiration, Sylvia Plath, April 13, 1961’.

  *Per Lorna Secker-Walker, the houses were 8 and 9 Chalcot Square, London N.W.1.

  *Lorna (Lea) Secker-Walker (1933– ), her husband David Secker-Walker (1932–2014) who worked as deputy City editor for the Sunday Telegraph, and their daughter Joanna (1959– ). The Secker-Walkers lived at 5 Chalcot Square.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘Last Lines’, ‘Sugar Loaf’, ‘Gog’, ‘Wino’, ‘Flanders, 1960’, and ‘Toll of Air Raids’, The Observer (16 April 1961): 31. Includes a brief article about Hughes entitled ‘In the Picture’.

  *House of Aries, BBC Third Programme (8 April 1961).

  *‘this huge 5-act one play’ appears in the original.

  *Margaret Wetzel Plath (1938–92); B.A. 1960, Colby College; M.A. 1961, Radcliffe College. Married Warren Plath, 2 June 1962.

  *Date supplied from postmark.

  *Jarrold & Sons, for Cathay Arts, birthday card. ‘Happy Birthday’ added by SP.

  *The photographs are no longer with the letter.

  *The photograph is no longer with the letter.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘My Grandpa’, Wednesday Magazine, directed by Richard Francis, BBC Television, 19 April 1961.

  *The poems and article, cited in SP to ASP, 14 April 1961, are no longer with the letter.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *KG birthday card.

  *Franz Schubert, Gretchen am Spinnrade (1814); based on text from Goethe’s Faust.

  *The photographs are no longer with the letter.

  *Elizabeth D. Kray (1916–87); head of the Poetry Center at the YM-YWHA in New York, 1954–62.

  *Kray wrote to Peter Davison on 13 April 1961 asking if he expected SP to be in the US in 1962. Davison replied on 17 April passing on their address. Copies of letters held by Yale University.

  *Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (London: Heinemann, 1963). Published on 14 January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas.