The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

by Sylvia Plath

  *SP worked part-time as a secretary in the adult psychiatric clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital. See Journals of Sylvia Plath: Appendix 14 ‘Hospital Notes’, 624–9.

  *The audograph was used in dictation to record sound.

  *‘News in Brief’, The Times (23 October 1958): 6: ‘POETRY AWARDS. —Mr. E. Hughes, of Boston, United States, who was born in Yorkshire, has won the first prize of £300 in the Arthur Guinness, Son and Company poetry awards, for his poem “The Thought-Fox”.’

  *Characters in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878).

  *Esther Tane Baskin (1926–73); married to SP’s colleague Leonard Baskin; mother of Tobias Isaac Baskin (1957– ).

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *Leonard Baskin’s Sculptures Drawings Prints exhibition was held at Boris Mirski Gallery, 166 Newbury Street, Boston, 17 November–10 December 1958. Boris Mirski (1898–1974) was an art dealer and gallery owner.

  *Leonard Baskin, ‘Death Among the Thistles’, 1958.

  *Leonard Baskin, ‘Tobias and the Angel’, 1958. SP and TH’s wood engraving, an artist’s proof, of ‘Tobias & the Angel’ appeared at auction via Bonhams on 21 March 2018.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *A short note added by TH has not been transcribed.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘A Woman Unconscious’, ‘Cat and Mouse’, ‘To Paint a Water-Lily’, and ‘Lupercalia’, Poetry 94 (August 1959): 296–300.

  *Ted Hughes, Meet My Folks! (London: Faber & Faber, 1961). Dedicated ‘For Frieda Rebecca’ and published on 7 April 1961 with illustrations by George Adamson. Rejected by Harper Publishers, Harcourt Brace, and the Atlantic Press in 1959.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *Published with a short memoir by Christie, ‘Remembering Sylvia’, Cambridge Review (7 February 1969): 253.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *Cf. SP’s poem ‘A Winter’s Tale’.

  *Probably E. Lucas Myers, ‘The Crest of Kelly-Haught’, Sewanee Review 67 (Winter 1959): 63–86.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘Thrushes’, The Observer (23 November 1958): 7. See Terence Kilmartin to TH, 13 November 1958; held by Emory University.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Snakecharmer’, ‘Lorelei’, and ‘The Disquieting Muses’, London Magazine 6 (March 1959): 33–6. See John Lehmann to SP, 10 December 1958; (photocopy) held by Smith College.

  *The line ‘L’ivresse des grandes profondeurs’ appears in stanza 11, line 2, of the publication of ‘Lorelei’ in Audience (Spring 1959): 33. Probably taken from Jacques Cousteau, The Silent World (New York: Harper & Row, 1953).

  *See also SP’s journal entry for 31 December 1958; Journals of Sylvia Plath: 454.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘February’, and probably ‘Lupercalia’.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘February’.

  *Russian writer Boris Pasternak (1890–1960); his Doctor Zhivago (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958).

  *Probably Autobiography of St. Theéreèse of Lisieux (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1958). See Journals of Sylvia Plath: 589–94.

  *English writer John Press (1920–2007). Possibly John Press, The Chequer’d Shade: Reflections on Obscurity in Poetry (London: Oxford University Press, 1958). SP’s copy held by Lilly Library.

  *SP refers to this letter in her journal: ‘Ted read my signature on the letter to his parents as “woe” instead of love. He was right, it looked surprising: the left hand knows not what the right writes’ (Journals of Sylvia Plath: 454).

  *This letter probably corresponds to the letter dated ‘[Early 1959]’ in Christopher Reid (ed.), Letters of Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 2007): 138–40.

  *See SP to John Lehmann, 24 December 1958.

  *See John Lehmann to SP, 30 December 1958; (photocopy) held by Smith College.

  *SP’s ‘Point Shirley’ and ‘Suicide Off Egg Rock’.

  *The clipping is no longer with the letter. The only mention of TH in the New York Times Book Review at that time was in Lewis Nichols, ‘In and Out of Books’, New York Times Book Review (9 November 1958): BR8. The section ‘Malt and Muse’ discussed TH’s Guinness Prize.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *Most likely 17 January 1959. See for reference, SP’s Journals entry for 20 January 1959. See also SP’s notes on frogs, undated; held by Lilly Library.

  *Anthony Hecht and Leonard Baskin, The Seven Deadly Sins: Poems (Northampton, Mass.: Gehenna Press, 1958). The engravings to which SP refers in the letter are ‘Gluttony’, ‘Pride’, ‘Lust’, and ‘Avarice’.

  *Leonard Baskin, Pike: A Poem by Ted Hughes (Northampton, MA: Gehenna Press Broadside (B6), 1959).

  *English literary critic Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893–1979) taught at Cambridge (1922–9, 1931–9) and Harvard (1939–63).

  *Esther Baskin, Creatures of Darkness (Little, Brown, 1962). Includes Ted Hughes, ‘Esther’s Tomcat’. SP’s ‘Goatsucker’ was not selected.

  *English poet Robert Graves (1895–1985). Extract © Robert Graves (2000). Reprinted by kind permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.

  *There are several textual variations between this typed poem and its final appearance in SP’s Collected Poems (London/New York: Faber & Faber/Harper & Row, 1981). In CP, the title was changed to ‘Goatsucker’; line 11 ends with a comma; line 12 runs into line 13 without punctuation; line 13 begins with ‘And’; and in line 14 ‘Luna’ has a lower-case l, ‘luna’.

  *Elizabeth Ames (1885–1977); executive director of Yaddo, 1923–69.

  *Elizabeth Ames to SP, undated; held in Yaddo Records, 1870–1980, New York Public Library. From 9 September to 19 November 1959, SP and TH were guests at Yaddo, an artist’s colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. SP was initially recommended to Ames by her creative writing professor Alfred Kazin on 3 February 1955.

  *Elizabeth Ames to SP, 13 February 1959; held by New York Public Library.

  *SP’s and TH’s applications held by New York Public Library.

  *The Blue Ship Tea Room, then on T Wharf. For her description of eating there, see 5 September 1958, Journals of Sylvia Plath: 418.

  *SP was at work on the rug from January 1959 through at least May. See SP’s journals. SP picked up rag rug making in North Tawton; see Ted Hughes, ‘The Rag Rug’ in Birthday Letters (London: Faber & Faber, 1998).

  *According to SP’s address book, the Plumers lived at 26 Fairhaven Avenue, Concord, Mass.

  *Christopher Levenson, Poetry from Cambridge (London: Fortune Press, 1958); Sylvia Plath, ‘All the Dead Dears’, ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, ‘Miss Drake Proceeds to Supper’, and ‘Epitaph for Fire and Flower’, 41–5; and Ted Hughes, ‘Thrushes’, ‘The Good Life’, ‘The Historian’, ‘Dick Straightup’, and ‘Crow Hill’, 25–8. Erroneously lists SP as having attended Brown University. Published twenty-two poets, among them David Wevill.

  *‘on the title contents page’ appears in the original.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘The Bull of Bendylaw’, Horn Book Magazine (April 1959): 148.

  *Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls (1916–99); assistant and associate professor, 1949–56, Wales Professor of Sanskrit and chairman of the department of Sanskrit and Indian studies, Harvard University, 1956–83; SP worked part-time for Ingalls, spring 1959.

  *See Lynne Lawner to SP, 7 December 1958 and 21 January 1959; held by Lilly Library.

  *English writer William Golding (1911–93).

  *English writer J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973).

  *Lynne Lawner, ‘Wedding Night of a Nun’, Best Poems of 1955 (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 1957); won first prize for Undergraduate Poetry.

  *American writer and critic Edmund Wilson (1895–1972); daughter Rosalind Wilson (1923–2000) and son Reuel Wilson (1938– ); Wilson’s four wives were: Mary Blair, Margaret Canby, Mary McCarthy, and Elena Thornton.

  *William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, played at the Colonial Theater, 106 Boylston Street, Boston. The play ran for two weeks 12–24 January 1959.

  *American model and actress
Ruth Ford (1911–2009).

  *American actor Zachary Scott (1914–65).

  *Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author; opened on 3 March 1959, at the Wilbur Theatre, 246 Tremont Street, Boston.

  *Steven Arnold Aaron (1936–2012); B.A. 1957, Harvard University; founder and artistic director of Boston Repertory, 1958; assistant director at Loeb Drama Center, Harvard, 1959.

  *Dylan Thomas, The Doctor and the Devil, performed at the Little Theater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 20–31 January 1959.

  *Margaret Tillman Booth (c. 1924/5– ); their daughters Carol, Margot, and Robin Booth.

  *American poet George Edwin Starbuck (1931–96); editor at Houghton Mifflin, 1958–61; married Janice King, 25 April 1955 (divorced); father of Margaret Mary, Stephen George, and John Edward by his first wife Janice King.

  *American poet Anne Harvey Sexton (1928–74).

  *Anne Sexton, ‘The Double Image’, ‘You, Doctor Martin’, and ‘Elizabeth Gone’, Hudson Review 12 (Spring 1959): 73–81.

  *Anne Sexton, ‘Some Foreign Letters’, Partisan Review 27 (Spring 1960): 272–5.

  *Anne Sexton, ‘Sunbathers’, New Yorker (13 June 1959): 93; and ‘The Road Back’, New Yorker (29 August 1959): 30.

  *Anne Sexton, ‘The Double Image’.

  *Agatha Fassett, The Naked Face of Genius: Beĺa Bartók’s American Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958).

  *Lawner’s friend; mentioned in 7 December 1958 letter as ‘a lovely & very fine It. poet’.

  *Lynne Lawner, Wedding Night of a Nun (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964).

  *American poet Dudley Fitts (1903–68).

  *Botteghe Oscure, an Italian literary journal published 1948–60 and edited by Marguerite Caetani (1880–1963).

  *American poet Vassar Miller (1924–98). The review to which SP refers was likely for Vassar Miller, Adam’s Footprint (New Orleans, La.: New Orleans Poetry Review Press, 1956).

  *Donald Hall, Robert Pack, and Louis Simpson (eds), New Poets of England and America (New York: Meridian Books, 1957); Millar’s poems were ‘Adam’s Footprint’, ‘Apology’, ‘Autumnal Spring Song’, ‘Bout with Burning’, ‘Ceremony’, ‘Epithalamium’, ‘Love Song Out of Nothing’, ‘Paradox’, and ‘Reciprocity’ (232–7).

  *American poet May Swenson (1913–89); her ‘Frontispiece’, New Poets of England and America, 300–1. Her other poems in the anthology are ‘Question’, ‘The Key to Everything’, and ‘The Garden at St. John’s’ (301–4).

  *English poet and critic Edith Sitwell (1887–1964).

  *American poet Amy Lowell (1874–1925).

  *American poet Emily Dickinson (1830–86).

  *American poet John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974). The third judge in 1959 was Marie Borroff.

  *Begun in 1947, the Somerset Maugham Award is an annual award, to be spent on foreign travel, given to the best writer(s) of a book in the previous year.

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

  *Ted Hughes, ‘Thrushes’, ‘The Bull Moses’, ‘The Voyage’, ‘Pike’, and ‘Nicholas Ferrer’, Audience (Summer 1959): 55–61.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘February’, ‘The Bull Moses’, and ‘The Voyage’, London Magazine 6 (April 1959): 47–9.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Lorelei’, ‘Full Fathom Five’, and ‘The Hermit at Outermost House’, Audience 6 (Spring 1959): 33–6.

  *The enclosure is no longer with the letter.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Whiteness I Remember’, Christian Science Monitor (5 March 1959): 12. SP also published: ‘Prologue to Spring’, Christian Science Monitor (23 March 1959): 8, and ‘Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies’, Christian Science Monitor (26 March 1959): 8.

  *Probably Sylvia Plath, ‘A Walk to Withens’.

  *One of these was probably Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, ‘A Sanskrit Poetry of Village and Field: Yogesśvara and His Fellow Poets’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 74 (July 1954): 119–31.

  *Elizabeth Ames to SP & TH, 3 April 1959; held by New York Public Library.

  *American writer Mary Stetson Clarke (1911–94); B.A. 1933, Boston University; ASP’s former student at Melrose High School (1928–9) and close friend; purchased a book on learning shorthand for SP. Clarke later helped ASP prepare Letters Home.

  *Susan E. Clarke; matriculated with Smith College Class of 1963: B.A. 1964, Wheaton College; MBA 1972, Boston University.

  *American writer of children’s books Elizabeth George Speare (1908–94). Speare won the 1959 Newbery Medal for The Witch of Blackbird Pond (1958) and the 1962 Newbery Medal for The Bronze Bow (1961).

  *Editor of Sewanee Review Monroe K. Spears (1916–98).

  *See Monroe K. Spears to SP, 7 April 1959; held by Sewanee: The University of the South.

  *Children’s book author and illustrator Ann Davidow-Goodman (1932– ); daughter of Leonard and Claire Sondheim Davidow of Highland Park, Illinois; SP’s friend. Ann Davidow withdrew from Smith College in January 1951 following her first semester; earned B.A. 1954, University of Chicago; married Leo Goodman 1960 (divorced 1976); married Russell Hayes 1983. Corresponded with SP, 1951–62.

  *Ted Hughes, The House of Taurus, unpublished play.

  *TH received a $5,000 grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. See ‘45 Guggenheim Winners Here’, Boston Herald (20 April 1959). Copy held in TH’s scrapbook, Emory University.

  *Howard Moss to SP, 21 April 1959; held by New York Public Library.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Water Color of Grantchester Meadows’, New Yorker (28 May 1960): 30. SP’s wishes regarding the suggestions made by Moss were respected and the poem read: ‘Each thumb-sized bird / Flits nimble-winged in thickets, and of good color.’

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Man in Black’, New Yorker (9 April 1960): 40.

  *See Alice Norma Davis to SP, 29 April 1959; held by Smith College. Davis directed SP to Mary Albro (Smith College, 1936) director of the Radcliffe Appointment Bureau and their Seven College Directory of personnel officers who employed college-trained women.

  *Leonard Baskin, ‘Seated Man With Owl’ (sculpture, 1959).

  *TH lectured to two classes, English 11 (Freshman English) and English 220 (Practice in Various Forms of Writing) at Smith College on 16 April 1959.

  *Scottish born poet and translator Alastair Reid (1926–2014).

  *This typescript of ‘Sculptor’ held in Hughes–Baskin Papers. Vol. iv: Add MS 83687, British Library.

  *In addition to the Atlantic Montly Press, SP submitted The Bed Book manuscript to the Christian Science Monitor (June 1959), Harcourt, Brace (23 September 1959), Macmillan & Company (27 October 1959), Wilcox & Follett (23 February 1960), William Heinemann (25 February 1960), Bodley Head Books for Children (1 March 1960), Macmillan (15 April 1960), World Publishing (20 May 1960), G. P. Putnam (9 July 1960). The Bed Book was published in 1976 with illustrations by Quentin Blake (London: Faber & Faber) and illustrations by Emily Arnold McCully (New York: Harper & Row).

  *The two characters in an early draft of SP’s ‘The Bed Book’, later dropped.