Editing Sylvia Plath (section)

==Works==
{{main|Sylvia Plath bibliography}}
Plath wrote poetry from the age of 8, her first poem appearing in the ''[[Boston Evening Traveller|Boston Traveller]]''.<ref name="ODNB"/> By the time she arrived at Smith College, she had written over 50 short stories, and her work had been published in numerous magazines.<ref name="Stevenson-1994">{{harvnb|Stevenson|1994}}</ref> At Smith, she majored in English literature and won all the major prizes in writing and scholarship, including literary prizes for her poetry. Additionally, she received a summer editor position at the young women's magazine ''[[Mademoiselle (magazine)|Mademoiselle]]''.<ref name="ODNB" /> On her graduation in 1955, she won the [[Glascock Prize]] for "[[Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea]]". Later, at Cambridge, she wrote for the university publication ''[[Varsity (Cambridge)|Varsity]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sylvia Plath's Cambridge-era Prose: A Survey |url=https://sylviaplathinfo.blogspot.com/2022/05/sylvia-plaths-cambridge-era-prose-survey.html |access-date=2023-10-31 |website=sylviaplathinfo.blogspot.com |language=en}}</ref>

[[Al Alvarez|Alvarez]] clearly views Plath as part of a generation that helped establish a new artistic myth. In contrast to the [[T. S. Eliot|Eliot]] generation, which championed the impersonality of art and the “extinction of personality”<ref>Eliot, T. S. (2001). “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” ''The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism,'' First Edition, edited by Leitch VB, Cain WE, W.W. Norton & Company, p. 1094</ref> in creative expression, Plath and her contemporaries fused their inner lives with their artistic output. As Alzarez puts it, this is a form of art in which “the barriers between the artist’s work and his life are forever shifting and crumbling.”<ref> Alvarez, Al (2005). “The Myth of the Artist,” ''Madness and Creativity in Literature and Culture'', edited by Corinne J. Saunders and Jane Macnaughton, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 196</ref> 

===''The Colossus''===
{{Main|The Colossus and Other Poems}}
{{Quote box |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote =<poem>
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.
</poem>
 |source =from "The Colossus", <br>''[[The Colossus and Other Poems]], 1960''
}}

By the time [[Heinemann (publisher)|Heinemann]] published her first collection, ''The Colossus and Other Poems'' in the UK in late 1960, Plath had been short-listed several times in the [[Yale Series of Younger Poets|Yale Younger Poets]] book competition and had her work printed in ''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's]]'', ''[[The Spectator]]'' and ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]''. All the poems in ''The Colossus'' had been printed in major U.S. and British journals, and she had a contract with ''The New Yorker''.<ref name="Wagner">{{harvnb|Wagner-Martin|1988|pp=2–5}}</ref> It was, however, her 1965 collection ''Ariel'', published posthumously, on which Plath's reputation essentially rests. "Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme."<ref name="poets1"/>

''The Colossus'' received largely positive UK reviews, highlighting Plath's voice as new and strong, individual and American in tone. [[Peter Dickinson]] at ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' called the collection "a real find" and "exhilarating to read", full of "clean, easy verse".<ref name="Wagner"/> [[Bernard Bergonzi]] at the ''Manchester Guardian'' wrote the book was an "outstanding technical accomplishment" with a "virtuoso quality".<ref name="Wagner"/> From the point of publication, she became a presence on the poetry scene. The book was published in America in 1962 to less-glowing reviews. While her craft was generally praised, her writing was viewed by some critics at the time as more derivative of other poets.<ref name="Wagner"/>

===''The Bell Jar''===
{{Main|The Bell Jar}}{{Quote box
| quote = I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked [...] as I sat there, unable to decide [which fig], the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
| author = [[The Bell Jar]]
| source = 1963
| align = left
| width = 25%
| bgcolor = #FFDCF5
}}
Plath's semi-autobiographical novel—her mother wanted to block publication—was published in 1963 and in the US in 1971.<ref name="Kirk-xxi" />{{sfn|McCullough|2005|p=xii}} Describing the compilation of the book to her mother, she wrote, "What I've done is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color—it's a [[potboiler|pot boiler]] really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown... I've tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar".<ref>Plath ''Biographical Note'' 294–295. From {{harvnb|Wagner-Martin|1988|p=107}}</ref> She described her novel as "an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past".<ref>Plath ''Biographical Note 293''. From {{harvnb|Wagner-Martin|1988|p=112}}</ref> Plath dated a Yale senior named Dick Norton during her junior year. Norton, upon whom the character of Buddy in ''[[The Bell Jar]]'' is based, contracted tuberculosis and was treated at the [[Ray Brook Sanatorium]]. While visiting Norton, Plath broke her leg skiing, an incident that was fictionalized in the novel.{{sfn|Taylor|1986|pp=270, 274–275}} Plath also used the novel to highlight the issue of women in the workforce during the 1950s. She strongly believed in women's abilities to be writers and editors while society forced them to fulfill secretarial roles:<ref>{{cite journal |last=Jernigan |first=Adam T. |date=January 1, 2014 |title=Paraliterary Labors in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar: Typists, Teachers, and the Pink-Collar Subtext |journal=Modern Fiction Studies |volume=60 |issue=1 |pages=1–27 |doi=10.1353/mfs.2014.0010 |oclc=5561439112 |s2cid=162359742}}</ref><blockquote> Now with me, writing is the first delight in life. I want time and money to write, both very necessary. I will not sacrifice my time to learn shorthand because I do not want any of the jobs which shorthand would open up, although those jobs are no doubt very interesting for girls who want them. I do not want the rigid hours of a magazine or publishing job. I do not want to type other people's letters and read their manuscripts. I want to type my own and write my own. So secretarial training is out for me. That I know. (Sylvia Plath's letter to her mother, 10 Feb 1955)</blockquote>

=== ''Double Exposure'' ===
In 1963, after ''The Bell Jar'' was published, Plath began working on another literary work, titled ''Double Exposure'', which was never published.{{sfn|Ferretter|2009|p=15}} According to Ted Hughes in 1979, Plath left behind a typescript of "some 130 pages",<ref>{{cite book|last=Plath|first=Sylvia|editor=Ted Hughes|title=[[Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams]]|edition=2nd|location=London|publisher=Faber and Faber|year=1979|page=vii|postscript=,}} cited in {{harvnb|Ferretter|2009|p=15}}</ref> but in 1995 he spoke of just "sixty, seventy pages".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Heinz|first=Drue|author-link=Drue Heinz|title=Ted Hughes, The Art of Poetry No. 71|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1669/the-art-of-poetry-no-71-ted-hughes|page=98|journal=The Paris Review|issue=134|date=Spring 1995|volume=Spring 1995 |postscript=,}} cited in {{harvnb|Ferretter|2009|p=15}}</ref> Olwyn Hughes wrote in 2003 that the typescript may have consisted of the first two chapters, and did not exceed sixty pages.<ref>Olwyn Hughes, Corrections of [[Diane Middlebrook]]'s ''Her Husband''. Emory University Libraries: Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL), Olwyn Hughes Papers 1956–1997, box 2, folder 20 – cited in {{harvnb|Ferretter|2009|p=15}}</ref>

===''Ariel''===
{{Main|Ariel (poetry collection)}}

{{Quote box |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote =<poem>And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.</poem>
 |source=from the poem "[[Ariel (poem)|Ariel]]", October 12, 1962<ref>{{cite news |last=Plath |first=Sylvia |date=March 13, 2008 |title=Ariel |location=London |work=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/13/poetry.sylviaplath4 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170312080603/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/13/poetry.sylviaplath4 |archive-date=March 12, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

The posthumous publication of ''[[Ariel (poetry collection)|Ariel]]'' in 1965 precipitated Plath's rise to fame.<ref name="ODNB"/> The poems in ''Ariel'' mark a departure from her earlier work into a more personal arena of poetry. [[Robert Lowell]]'s poetry may have played a part in this shift as she cited Lowell's 1959 book ''[[Life Studies]]'' as a significant influence, in an interview just before her death.<ref name="WM184">{{harvnb|Wagner-Martin|1988|p=184}}</ref> The impact of ''Ariel'' was dramatic, with its dark and potentially autobiographical descriptions of mental illness in poems such as "[[Tulips (poem)|Tulips]]", "[[Daddy (poem)|Daddy]]" and "[[Lady Lazarus]]".<ref name="WM184"/> Plath's work is often held within the genre of [[confessional poetry]] and the style of her work compared to other contemporaries, such as Lowell and [[W.D. Snodgrass]]. Plath's close friend [[Al Alvarez]], who wrote about her extensively, said of her later work: "Plath's case is complicated by the fact that, in her mature work, she deliberately used the details of her everyday life as raw material for her art. A casual visitor or unexpected telephone call, a cut, a bruise, a kitchen bowl, a candlestick—everything became usable, charged with meaning, transformed. Her poems are full of references and images that seem impenetrable at this distance, but which could mostly be explained in footnotes by a scholar with full access to the details of her life."{{sfn|Alvarez|2007|p=214}} Many of Plath's later poems deal with what one critic calls the "domestic surreal" in which Plath takes everyday elements of life and twists the images, giving them an almost nightmarish quality. Plath's poem "Morning Song" from ''Ariel'' is regarded as one of her finest poems on ''freedom of expression'' of an artist.<ref>{{Cite web|title=10 Most Famous Poems by Sylvia Plath {{!}} Learnodo Newtonic|url=https://learnodo-newtonic.com/sylvia-plath-famous-poems|website=learnodo-newtonic.com|access-date=May 30, 2020|archive-date=August 6, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806125451/https://learnodo-newtonic.com/sylvia-plath-famous-poems|url-status=live}}</ref>

Plath's fellow confessional poet and friend [[Anne Sexton]] commented: "Sylvia and I would talk at length about our first suicide, in detail and in depth—between the free potato chips. Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem. Sylvia and I often talked opposites. We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric lightbulb, sucking on it. She told the story of her first suicide in sweet and loving detail, and her description in ''The Bell Jar'' is just that same story."<ref>[http://www.theparisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/4073 ''The Paris Review'' Interviews: "The Art of Poetry No. 15. Anne Sexton". Interview by Barbara Kevles. Issue 52, Summer 1971] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100613162557/http://theparisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/4073 |date=June 13, 2010 }}. Accessed July 15, 2010</ref> The confessional interpretation of Plath's work has led to some dismissing certain aspects of her work as an exposition of sentimentalist melodrama; in 2010, for example, [[Theodore Dalrymple]] asserted that Plath had been the "patron saint of self-dramatisation" and of self-pity.{{sfn|Dalrymple|2010|p=157}} Revisionist critics such as Tracy Brain have, however, argued against a tightly autobiographical interpretation of Plath's material.<ref>{{harvnb|Brain|2001}}; {{harvnb|Brain|2006|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=aMUkBQ-3mnUC&pg=PA11 11]–32}}; {{harvnb|Brain|2007}}</ref> On January 16, 2004, The Independent newspaper in London published an article that ranked ''Ariel'' as the 3rd best book of modern poetry among 'The 10 Best Modern Poetry Books.'

===Other works===
In 1971, the volumes ''Winter Trees'' and ''Crossing the Water'' were published in the UK, including nine previously unseen poems from the original manuscript of ''Ariel''.<ref name="Kirk-xxi"/> Writing in ''[[New Statesman]]'', fellow poet [[Peter Porter (poet)|Peter Porter]] wrote:
{{blockquote|
''Crossing the Water'' is full of perfectly realised works. Its most striking impression is of a front-rank artist in the process of discovering her true power. Such is Plath's control that the book possesses a singularity and certainty which should make it as celebrated as ''The Colossus'' or ''Ariel''.<ref>Plath, Sylvia. ''The Colossus and Other Poems'', Faber and Faber, 1977.</ref>
}}

The ''Collected Poems'', published in 1981, edited and introduced by Ted Hughes, contained poetry written from 1956 until her death. Plath posthumously was awarded the [[Pulitzer Prize for Poetry]].<ref name="Kirk-xxi"/> In 2006, [[Anna Journey]], then a graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University, discovered a previously unpublished sonnet written by Plath titled [[Ennui (sonnet)|"Ennui"]]. The poem, composed during Plath's early years at Smith College, was published in the online journal ''[[Blackbird (journal)|Blackbird]]''.<ref>{{cite news | url = https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/oct/31/news | title = Unpublished Plath sonnet goes online tomorrow | agency = Associated Press | date = October 31, 2006 | access-date = April 29, 2012 | archive-date = September 26, 2014 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140926001407/http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/oct/31/news | url-status = live }}</ref>{{efn|1=Two poems titled ''Ennui (I)'' and ''Ennui (II)'' are listed in a partial catalogue of Plath's [[juvenilia]] in the ''Collected Poems''. A note explains that the texts of all but half a dozen of the many pieces listed are in the Sylvia Plath Archive of juvenilia in the [[Lilly Library]] at Indiana University. The rest are with the Sylvia Plath Estate.}}

===Journals and letters===
Plath's letters were published in 1975, edited and selected by her mother [[Aurelia Plath]]. The collection ''Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963'' came out partly in response to the strong public reaction to the publication of ''The Bell Jar'' in America.<ref name="Kirk-xxi"/> Plath started writing in her diary on January 1, 1944, at the age of 11 and continued until her death by suicide in February 1963. Her early diaries remain unpublished and are currently at [[Indiana University Bloomington]].<ref name="lithub">{{cite web |last=Rollyson |first=Carl |date=November 19, 2024 |title=How a Young Sylvia Plath Found Her Literary Voice Through Diary Keeping |url=https://lithub.com/how-a-young-sylvia-plath-found-her-literary-voice-through-diary-keeping |website=[[LitHub]] |access-date=December 2, 2024 |archive-date=November 27, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241127060119/https://lithub.com/how-a-young-sylvia-plath-found-her-literary-voice-through-diary-keeping/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Sylvia Plath &vert; Lilly Library |url=https://libraries.indiana.edu/lilly-library/sylvia-plath |website=[[Indiana University Bloomington]] |date=July 18, 2019 |access-date=December 2, 2024 |archive-date=August 3, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240803003927/https://libraries.indiana.edu/lilly-library/sylvia-plath |url-status=live}}</ref> Her adult diaries, starting from her first year at Smith College in 1950, were published in 1982 as ''The Journals of Sylvia Plath'', edited by Frances McCullough, with Ted Hughes as consulting editor. In 1982, when Smith College acquired Plath's remaining journals, Hughes sealed two of them until February 11, 2013, the 50th anniversary of Plath's death.<ref name="Kirk-xxii">{{harvnb|Kirk|2004|p=xxii}}</ref>

During the last years of his life, Hughes began working on a fuller publication of Plath's journals. In 1998, shortly before his death, he unsealed the two journals, and passed the project onto his children by Plath, Frieda and Nicholas, who passed it on to Karen V. Kukil, who finished her editing in December 1999. In 2000 [[Random House|Anchor Books]] published ''The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath''.{{sfn|Plath|2000}} More than half of the new volume contained newly released material;<ref name="Kirk-xxii"/> the American author [[Joyce Carol Oates]] hailed the publication as a "genuine literary event". Hughes faced criticism for his role in handling the journals: He claims to have destroyed Plath's last journal, which contained entries from the winter of 1962 up to her death. In the foreword of the 1982 version, he writes "I destroyed [the last of her journals] because I did not want her children to have to read it (in those days I regarded forgetfulness as an essential part of survival)."<ref name="ODNB"/>{{sfn|Wagner-Martin|1988|p=313}}