The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

by Sylvia Plath

  *A reference to the poem ‘Fern Hill’ by Dylan Thomas.

  *According to SP’s calendar, this was Marianne Frisch in Arlesheim, Switzerland.

  *According to SP’s calendar, this was George Gavin Blakey; B.A. 1957, economics, law, Trinity College, Cambridge.

  *Varsity.

  *Date supplied from postmark.

  *Dorothea Wormser Stein (1930–88); B.A. 1952, art, Smith College; resident of Gillett House. While Wormser was an art major, she had no art classes with SP.

  *Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock (1924); presented by the Comedy Theatre Club, SP saw the play with Luke Myers on 15 March 1956.

  *Elvis Lucas Myers (1930– ), American; B.A. 1953, University of the South; B.A. 1956, archaeology and anthropology, Downing College, Cambridge; friend of TH and contributor to Saint Botolph’s Review.

  *Bertram Wyatt-Brown (1932–2012), American; B.A. 1953, University of the South; B.A. 1957, history, King’s College, Cambridge; dated SP’s housemate Jane Baltzell.

  *English scholar and poet A. E. Housman (1859–1936); his ‘XLV. If it chance your eye offend you’. The lines read ‘If it chance your eye offend you, / Pluck it out, lad, and be sound’.

  *Pages numbered 1 and 2 by SP are from 26 March 1956. The 28 March 1956 letter continues this and is numbered by SP 3, 4, 5, and 6.

  *Per the return address on the envelope, SP stayed in room 26, Hôtel de Béarn, then at 38 rue de Lille, Paris.

  *Giovanni Perego; Paris correspondent of Paese Sera; dated SP, spring 1956.

  *Anthony James Gray (1936– ), British; B.A. 1956, New College, Oxford; toured Paris with SP, spring 1956.

  *Anthony Gray’s sister.

  *Professor Sir James Gray (1891–1975), Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy 1937–59.

  *A reference to Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944).

  *Jean Anouilh’s Ornifle played at the Comédie Champs Elysées, 15 Avenue Montaigne, Paris.

  *According to SP’s calendar, she saw Rêves à vendre at Studio Parnasse, 11 Rue Jules Chaplain, Paris.

  *Donald Cheney (1932– ); B.A. 1954, Yale College.

  *According to SP’s calendar, this was Michael Ross Butcher; B.A. 1952, economics, law, Jesus College, Cambridge.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘An American in Paris’, Varsity, 21 April 1956, 6–7; with two sketches by SP captioned ‘Kiosque by Louvre’ and ‘Tabac opposite the Palais de Justice’.

  *Ted Hughes.

  *According to handwritten annotations made to the letter by an Atlantic Monthly employee, Plath submitted eleven poems. These include only two titles which elicited commentary by Atlantic staff: ‘Pursuit’ and ‘Pigeon Post’.

  *American poet and editor Karl Shapiro (1913–2000).

  *A note on the letter indicates SP submitted seven poems.

  *SP excerpted this letter in her journals.

  *‘To Sassoon: April 18’ appears in the original.

  *See ‘Conversation Among the Ruins’, Collected Poems, 21

  *According to SP’s calendar, she wrote ‘Metamorphosis’ (later ‘Faun’) on 18 April 1956.

  *Enclosure held by Lilly Library.

  *The other female reporter was Josephine Scarr.

  *Timothy Seton Green; B.A. 1957, history, Christ’s College, Cambridge.

  *Soviet politicians Nikolai Bulganin (1895–1975) and Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971).

  *According to SP’s calendar, she wrote ‘Ode for Ted’ on 21 April 1956; originally titled ‘Poem for Pan’.

  *According to SP’s calendar, she finished this poem on 20 April 1956; poem later titled ‘Song for a Summer’s Day’.

  *The Garden House Hotel was at Little Saint Mary’s Lane, Cambridge.

  *According to SP’s calendar, she attended with Timothy Green, Barry Wagg, and Jo Scarr.

  *On Panda Prints birthday card designed by Rosalind Welcher.

  *British Conservative Party politician Robert Anthony Eden (1897–1977).

  *British Labour Party politician Clement Atlee (1883–1967).

  *Soviet diplomat Jacob Malik (1906–80) and his wife Valentina Malik.

  *The mayor of Northampton through April 1956 was Walter Lewis; in May Thomas H. Cockerill became the new mayor.

  *The mayor of Northampton, Mass., at this time was James Cahillane (1910–91).

  *Chief and Mrs Michael Okorodudu.

  *Plato, Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias (London: William Heinemann, 1953); SP’s copy is held by Smith College.

  *This was for the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets.

  *American poet John Holmes (1904–62).

  *SP stayed at Clifford’s Inn, Fetter Lane, off Fleet Street, London.

  *Jo Scarr and Timothy Green, ‘“Varsity” Goes to Meet B & K and has Vodka and Caviar’, Varsity, 28 April 1956, 6. SP is mentioned in the article: ‘Sylvia Plath, American undergraduate at Newnham, took the Marshal’s hand – “You must come to Cambridge”.’

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Smith College in Retrospect’, Varsity, 12 May 1956, 6–7.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Sylvia Plath Tours the Stores and Forecasts May Week Fashions’, Varsity, 26 May 1956, 6–7.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Cambridge Letter’, Isis, 16 May 1956, 9.

  *According to SP’s calendar, in addition to writing ‘Faun’, ‘Ode for Ted’, and ‘Song for a Summer’s Day’, she recently wrote: ‘Mad Queen’s Song’ (probably ‘The Queen’s Complaint’) on 18–19 April; ‘Firesong’ on 21–2 April; ‘The Glutton’ on 27 April; and ‘Strumpet Song’ on 29 April 1956.

  *‘praise the lord and and the crooked’ appears in the original.

  *Possibly a reference to Colin Evans and Herbert T. Waite, The New Waite’s Compendium of Natal Astrology (London: Routlege & Kegan Paul, 1953), which contains the following quote: ‘Scorpio governs the secret parts . . . generally coarse, thick, and curling; bullet- shaped top part of head, prominent over eyes; square face, aquiline or sometimes ill-shapen “squashed-out” type of nose, the face often reminding one of an eagle’ (30).

  *Ted Hughes, ‘Soliloquy of a Misanthrope’, The Hawk in the Rain (London: Faber & Faber, 1957); later retitled ‘Soliloquy’.

  *Olwyn Marguerite Hughes (1928–2016); SP’s sister-in-law.

  *According to SP’s calendar, this was the Red Lion Hotel.

  *According to SP’s calendar, this was at Miller’s.

  *ASP bought SP an Olivetti Lettera 22, #C8850.

  *Gerald Hughes (1920–2016), TH’s brother, married to Joan (Whelan), 1950; father of Ashley (1954– ) and Brendon (1956– ).

  *According to SP’s calendar, she wrote to Elinor Friedman Klein on 15 May 1956.

  *Held at Draper’s Hall, Throgmorton Street, London, on 11 May 1956.

  *Eleanor Shipley Duckett, Alfred the Great: The King and His England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).

  *Probably Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Aldrich, daughter of SP’s neighbours in Wellesley.

  *Probably SP’s cousin Nancy Benotti (1947– ).

  *Enclosures held by Lilly Library. On one, next to a photograph of SP modelling a bathing suit, SP typed ‘From front page of Varsity! with love, from Betty Grable.’

  *The Cambridge Society of Painters and Sculptors exhibition, featuring works by Betty Rea, Shelley Fausset, John Smith, Cecil Collins, and Christopher Cornford was held at the Cambridge Arts Council gallery, All Saint’s Passage, Cambridge.

  *Joshua Taylor’s was a department store then on Market Street, Cambridge.

  *According to SP’s calendar, her recent poems were: ‘Bucolics’ on 5 May; ‘Wreath for a Bridal’ on 17–18 May, and ‘Two Sisters of Persephone’ on 24 May 1956.

  *At the time, Myers lived at 12 Tenison Avenue, Cambridge.

  *Jacob Grimm, Märchen der Brüder Grimm (Munich: Droemersche Verlagsanstalt, 1937); SP’s copy is now held by Emory University; presented to SP from her mother on Christmas Day 1954,

  *Probably Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, A Celtic Miscellany (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1951); SP’s copy is now held by Emory University and includes the ownership inscription ‘Sylvia Plath, Cambridge, 1956’.

  *Patricia O’Neil’s younger sister Julie O’Neil. She attended Bryn Mawr.

  *Lois Marshall.

  *This part of the letter is handwritten and illegible due to damage and water staining.

  *Probably Rex. I and Mary R. Geary.

  *Jean Anouilh’s Waltz of the Toreadors (1952) played at the Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly Circus, London.

  *According to SP’s calendar, these were Mr and Mrs Forbes and Diana and Humphrey Lloyd.

  *In fact Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes married on Saturday 16 June 1956, at St George-the-Martyr, Queen Square, Holborn, London.

  *Schmidt’s, a German restaurant then, according to SP’s address book, at 33–43 Charlotte Street, London.

  *In 1956, the Archbishop of Canterbury was Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Baron Fisher of Lambeth (1887–1972).

  *SP and TH were married by Reverend R. Mercer Wilson (b. 1887). Wilson lived at 13 Doughty Street, London; Dickens’s house was number 48.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘Bawdry Embraced’, Poetry 88 (August 1956), 295–7.

  *According to SP’s calendar, she wrote ‘The Shrike’ on 3 July 1956.

  *According to SP’s calendar, this was called Chez Jean.

  *SP handwrote this sentence in the left margin.

  *The postscript appended to this letter and printed in Letters Home was taken from page 3 of SP to ASP, 10 August 1956.

  *Date supplied from postmark; postmarked Madrid, 8 July 1956.

  *A postscript by TH has not been transcribed

  *Ted Hughes, How the Whale Became (London: Faber & Faber, 1963).

  *Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories (London: Macmillan, 1902).

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘The Black Bull’; an incomplete typescript of the story is held by Emory University.

  *According to SP’s calendar, they saw the bullfight at ‘Ventas’: Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid.

  *Date supplied from postmark by Warren Plath.

  *According to SP’s calendar, she sent TH’s poems to Virginia Quarterly Review on 4 July 1956.

  *This letter is in two parts: 25 July 1956 comprises the first four pages; and the 2 August 1956 instalment pages numbered 5 and 6, respectively. The entire letter was probably sent on 3 August 1956, the date on which the envelope was postmarked.

  *‘in which the emotional’ appears in the original.

  *Edith Farrar Hughes (1898–1969) and William Henry Hughes (1894–1981); SP’s mother- and father-in-law; lived at the Beacon, Heptonstall Slack, Yorkshire.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘The Hag’, The Nation, 18 August 1956, 144.

  *Added in pen by SP in the left margin.

  *SP has encircled the address in pen.

  *Date supplied from postmark.

  *TH’s uncle Walter Farrar (1893–1976); married to Alice Horfsall Thomas Farrar (1896–1968). Their children were Barbara Farrar (1928–91), Edwin T. Farrar (1931–52), and James M. Farrar (1932–43).

  *According to SP’s calendar, she worked on ‘That Widow Mangada’ 3–9 August 1956.

  *According to SP’s calendar, she finished typing ‘The Black Bull’ on 2 August 1956.

  *According to SP’s calendar, she got the idea for ‘The Fabulous Roommate’ on 10 August 1956.

  *Many of SP’s sketches from Spain and other locations mentioned in these letters appeared in Sylvia Plath: Drawings (2013).

  *Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin (1925).

  *TH’s cousin Victoria Farrar (1938– ).

  *Edward Weeks to Sylvia Plath, 27 August 1956; held by Lilly Library.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Pursuit’, Atlantic Monthly, January 1957, 65.

  *According to SP’s calendar, she worked on ‘two slight poems re golden Midas & Firesong’ on 5 September; a story called ‘Hardcastle Crags’ on 7–10 September; and the poem ‘November Graveyard’ on 9 September 1956.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘Bartholomew Pygge, Esq.’

  *According to SP’s calendar, she sent ‘That Widow Mangada’, ‘The Black Bull’, and ‘Hardcastle Crags’ to Mademoiselle on 17 September 1956.

  *American screenwriter and theatre producer David Shaber (1929–99); instructor in the Theatre Department at Smith College, 1955–6. Shaber taught Playwriting (37a and 37b), Play Analysis (38), and Writing for Radio and Television (43a and 43b). During her senior year, Klein took Playwriting. Due to an accident at age seven, one of Shaber’s legs had been amputated.

  *Frances Reed Robinson (1907–83); B.A. 1928, Smith College.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘B. and K. at the Claridge’, Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Fall 1956, 16–17.

  *Olive Higgins Prouty to SP, 12 September 1956; held by Lilly Library.

  *The tape recorder was owned by British poet Peter Redgrove (1932–2003).

  *BBC producer in the Talks Department, D. S. Carne-Ross (1921–2010).

  *Peter Davison to SP, 25 September 1956; held by Lilly Library.

  *Mollie Panter-Downes, ‘Letter from London’, New Yorker, 5 May 1956, 113–14, 116–17.

  *Anglo-American poet Thom Gunn (1929–2004).

  *British writer Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916); Munro wrote under the name Saki.

  *In addition to ‘Creole Love Song’, Lamar published two additional stories: ‘Miss Carlo’, Atlantic Monthly, January 1957, 61–4; and ‘The Music Teacher’, May 1957, 57–60.

  *James Thurber, ‘Further Fables For Our Time’, New Yorker, 23 June 1956, 24–5. Additional fables published under this collective title appeared in the following issues: 7 July 1956, 18–19; 28 July 1956, 23–4; 11 August 1956, 19; 1 September 1956, 22–3; 22 September 1956, 45–6. The ‘Fables’ in the 7 July 1956 issue were: ‘The Grizzly and the Gadgets’, ‘The Goose that Laid the Gilded Egg’, and ‘The Philosopher and the Oyster’.

  *Theodore Roethke, ‘They Sing’, New Yorker, 18 August 1956, 22; and ‘The Small’, New Yorker, 8 September 1956, 32.

  *John Malcolm Brinnin, ‘Ich am of Irlaunde’, New Yorker, 25 August 1956, 30.

  *Adrienne Rich, ‘At the Jewish New Year’, New Yorker, 1 September 1956, 28.

  *Ogden Nash, ‘The Strange Case of the Lucrative Compromise’, New Yorker, 11 August 1956, 24; ‘It Would Have Been Quicker to Walk’, New Yorker, 8 September 1956, 36; ‘Ms. Found Under a Serviette in a Lovely Home’, New Yorker, 22 September 1956, 49.

  *Luke Zilles, ‘Bunch of Wildflowers’, New Yorker, 7 July 1956, 67.