Red Comet
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I owe an enormous amount of gratitude to Peter Steinberg. Throughout the research and writing of this book, Peter has been unfailingly generous with his time and knowledge. Peter answered many of my questions, pointed me to sources, and commented—in less than four weeks—upon a sixteen-hundred-page draft of my manuscript. Peter’s knowledge of Sylvia Plath and his dedication to her legacy is a legend in its own right. I also owe so much to Karen Kukil, who, for fifteen years, has been a great source of support and information for me in all things Plath. Karen put me in touch with sources, helped me navigate Plath’s vast archival holdings at Smith, and never tired of answering my questions. I am greatly indebted to these fine scholars who have each done so much to promote and disseminate Sylvia Plath’s work.
I could not have found a more perceptive, sympathetic, and meticulous editor than Deborah Garrison at Knopf, who understood the need for an in-depth critical biography of Sylvia Plath, and who gave me the time and space to write one. At Knopf, thank you to Todd Portnowitz for his help with production and permissions, Amy Stackhouse for copyediting the manuscript, Victoria Pearson for production editorial work, Cassandra Pappas for text design, John Gall for designing the cover, and Josefine Kalls and Jessica Purcell for organizing publicity. In London, thank you to my editor Robin Robertson at Jonathan Cape, and the Andrew Nurnberg Agency for handling foreign rights and translation.
I am grateful to have such a committed agent in Jacques de Spoelberch, who guided me through each stage of this book with great care and solicitude, and shared his own memories of literary life in Boston in the 1950s.
Thank you to the Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes estates for permission to scan all of Plath’s and Hughes’s archival material without any conditions attached. Reading a biography of one’s parents or husband is surely a difficult task, and I am grateful to both estates for their professionalism throughout the writing of this book. I am also grateful to the Aurelia Plath estate.
This book has benefited from the support of several institutions: in 2017–18, I received a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Fellowship; in 2016–17, I received a Biography Fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, City University of New York; in 2017, I was a visiting professor at the University of Huddersfield; in 2016, I was a U.S. Visiting Fellow at the Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library, and a visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford. I am grateful for all these awards and affiliations, which were a crucial source of financial and moral support. I would also like to recognize the Women Writing Women’s Lives Seminar at the City University of New York, the Elmet Trust in Yorkshire, and the Ted Hughes Network at the University of Huddersfield for helping to promote this biography while it was a work in progress.
This book is partly dedicated to the memory of the poet, scholar, and biographer Jon Stallworthy. Jon supervised my doctoral dissertation at Oxford, and continued to support my work in so many ways until his death in 2014. Jon was generous and gracious and wickedly funny. He took me seriously, and set the bar high. He cheered this book on in its very early stages, and gave me the confidence to believe I could undertake such a long and demanding project—and controversial subject. He is deeply missed.
My greatest thanks go to my husband, Nathan Holcomb, and my children, Isabel and Liam. Isabel was three when I began writing this book in 2011; Liam was born two years later. Writing a biography of an iconic poet while working in academia and raising two small children posed its challenges. This book would have been much harder to write without the help of my mother, Cheryl Valentino Clark, who held down the fort during my trips to England; the wonderful preschool teachers at the Montessori Children’s Room in Armonk, New York; and my children’s indefatigable pediatrician, Dr. Deborah Mollo. It really does take a village. Nathan has indulged my obsessive interest in postwar poetry since our Oxford days. He has been, and always will be, my first reader.
Notes on Sources
Abbreviations
AP
Aurelia Plath
BJ
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (London: Heinemann, 1963; New York: Harper Perennial, 2006)
BL
The British Library, London
CPTH
Collected Poems of Ted Hughes, Paul Keegan, ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003)
Diary
Sylvia Plath’s unpublished adolescent diary, archived at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Plath MSS II, Box 7, Folders 1–4
DN
Dick Norton
EBC
Edward Butscher Collection of Papers on Sylvia Plath, Smith College
EF
Elaine Feinstein
EFP
Elaine Feinstein Papers, 4/4, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, UK
Emory
Stuart A. Rose Library, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta
HC
Heather Clark
HM
Hinchcliffe Manuscript: an unfinished, unpublished Plath biography provisionally titled “The Descent of Ariel: The Death of Sylvia Plath” by Elizabeth Hinchcliffe, mid-1970s, Box 6, Folders 10–12, Frances McCullough Papers 1915–1994, Hornbake Library, University of Maryland, College Park
HRC
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
J
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950–1962, Karen Kukil, ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 2000)
JP
Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (London: Faber and Faber, 1977; 1979). Introduction by Ted Hughes.
L1
The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Vol. 1: 1940–1956, Peter K. Steinberg and Karen Kukil, eds. (New York: HarperCollins, 2017)
L2
The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Vol. 2: 1956–1963, Peter K. Steinberg and Karen Kukil, eds. (New York: HarperCollins, 2018)
LH
Letters Home, Aurelia Plath, ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1976; 1999)
LHMS
Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, Morgan Library
Lilly
Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. All material quoted from the Lilly Library comes from Plath MSS II unless otherwise noted.
LTH
Letters of Ted Hughes, Christopher Reid, ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 2007)
Morgan
Morgan Library and Museum, New York City, N.Y.
NYPL
Berg Collection, New York Public Library, New York City, N.Y.
OHP
Olive Higgins Prouty
Smith
Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
SP
Sylvia Plath
SPC
Sylvia Plath Colle
ction, Smith College
Stanford
Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University
TH
Ted Hughes
UCD
University College Dublin, Ireland
WP
Warren Plath
In the interests of concision, I have not listed the page numbers of Plath’s quoted published poems in the endnotes when the title of the poem is presented in the main text. All published Plath poems quoted in this biography are easily found in Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1981).
Full citations of published sources are provided in that source’s first endnote; thereafter, I use a short-form citation. Full initial citations are given in each chapter in which a published source is quoted. The endnotes provide a full bibliography of all sources used in this book.
All unpublished sources are listed in the endnotes. All material with the citation “Lilly” comes from Plath MSS II unless otherwise noted. For all Smith College and Lilly Library archive citations, and most Emory citations, I list the box number followed by the folder number in which the material is located. (For example, “10.1” means Box 10, Folder 1.) Archival citations from the British Library, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, University College Dublin, and other archives are listed according to their individual reference systems. For reasons of space, I have not listed box and folder numbers for all unpublished correspondence in Plath MSS II, Lilly Library, which is organized alphabetically in Boxes 1–6, or Plath’s unpublished adolescent diaries, which are organized chronologically in Plath MSS II, Lilly Library, Box 7, Folders 1–4. The Finding Aids for the Sylvia Plath Papers at the Lilly Library and Smith College, and the Ted Hughes Papers (as well as the papers of many of Hughes’s contemporaries) at Emory University and the British Library, are available online.
The use of maiden and married names for Plath’s female contemporaries is based on chronology. I have used Plath’s contemporaries’ maiden names in the text when discussing their actions before they were married. When citing correspondence, I use contemporaries’ names as they appeared at the time of writing. When quoting recent interviews or emails, I signal this later perspective by using both their maiden and married names in the text and endnotes. Endnotes make the dates of letters and interviews clear.
I have reproduced Plath’s words exactly as she wrote them, and use “[sic]” to note her spelling errors and her deliberate use of lowercase letters. All ellipses in quotations are the author’s unless otherwise noted in the endnotes.
The names of interviewees, plus the month, year, and location of each interview are listed in the endnotes.
Notes
PROLOGUE
1. SP to AP, 7 Nov. 1962. L2, 898.
2. Henry James, Selected Fiction, Leon Edel, ed. (New York: Dutton & Co., 1953), 482–535. The copy of this book I consulted contains mark-ups and annotations that Plath’s former student, Harriet Destler, made in Plath’s Smith College Freshman English class.
3. SP to Gordon Lameyer, 28 July 1955. L1, 943.
4. SP, 1957–58 Smith College Teaching Notes. 13.9–11, Lilly.
5. HC interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, Oct. 2015, South Salem, N.Y.
6. J, 360.
7. Adlai Stevenson, Smith College Commencement Address, 6 June 1955. Commencement Speech files, Class of 1955 records, Smith College Archives. Stevenson’s full speech is available online at http://www.equityalliancemn.org.
8. Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (New York: Perseus, 2011), 9; Jessica Mann, The Fifties Mystique (London: Quartet, 2012), 131.
9. Mann, The Fifties Mystique, 197.
10. SP to Gordon Lameyer, 6 Nov. 1954. L1, 832.
11. Hermione Lee, Biography: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 128–29.
12. Maggie Nelson, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 141.
13. Ibid., 260.
14. William H. Pritchard, “An Interesting Minor Poet?,” New Republic (30 Dec. 1981): 32–35; 33. Pritchard was quoting from a list of “24 Sylvia Plath jokes” he had read in a college newspaper.
15. Claire Dederer, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” Paris Review (20 Nov. 2017).
16. Helen Dudar, “The Virginia Woolf Cult,” Saturday Review (Feb. 1982): 33–35; 33.
17. “The Blood Jet Is Poetry,” review of Ariel, Time (10 June 1966): 118–20. 118.
18. Webster Schott, “The Cult of Plath,” Washington Post Book World (1 Oct. 1972), 3.
19. See, for example, critical books on Plath by Jacqueline Rose, Susan Van Dyne, Lynda Bundtzen, Judith Kroll, Tracy Brain, Tim Kendall, Steven Axelrod, and Christina Britzolakis.
20. Andrew Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted (New York: Scribner, 2013), 13–14; 80.
21. The article, an interview with Mary Rafferty Haroun and Janet Wagner Rafferty, is from the 1 November 2003 issue.
22. SP to Mel Woody, 5 July 1954. L1, 781.
23. HC interview with Phil McCurdy, May 2016, Ogunquit, Maine.
24. HC interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, Oct. 2015, South Salem, N.Y.
25. Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (London: Penguin, 1989), 298.
26. Kathleen Spivack, With Robert Lowell and His Circle (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012), 25.
27. HC interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, Oct. 2015, South Salem, N.Y.
28. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 4 Feb. 1963. L2, 967.
29. J, 495.
30. Elizabeth Hardwick, “On Sylvia Plath,” New York Review of Books (12 Aug. 1971), 3–5.
31. TH to Anne Stevenson, autumn 1986. LTH, 517.
32. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Arnold Rampersad, ed. (New York: Vintage, 1994), 426.
33. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 9 Apr. 1957. L2, 110.
34. Jane Baltzell Kopp email to HC, 9 Oct. 2016.
35. See Heather Clark, The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), for a comprehensive overview of Plath and Hughes’s literary partnership.
36. See Owen Leeming, Two of a Kind: Poets in Partnership. Interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. BBC Third Programme, London. Recorded 18 Jan. 1961; broadcast 31 Jan. 1961. National Sound Archives, BL. The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath. British Library/National Sound Archives/BBC Audio Compilation (2010).
37. SP to Anne Sexton, 21 Aug. 1962. L2, 812; SP to Brian Cox, 17 June 1961. L2, 625.
38. Barrie Cooke to Jack Sweeney, 20 Oct. 1962. LA52/69, Jack and Máire Sweeney Papers, UCD.
39. TH to Anne-Lorraine Bujon, 16 Dec. 1992. LTH, 627.
40. TH interview with Drue Heinz, “The Art of Poetry, LXXI,” Paris Review 134 (1995), in The Paris Review Interviews, vol. 3 (London: Picador, 2008), 56–92; 76.
41. SP to TH, 6 Oct. 1956. L1, 1281.
42. HC interview with Ruth Fainlight, May 2016, London.
43. In a 16 Oct. 1981 letter to Al Alvarez, Hughes said Plath’s “60–62” journals “walked, not too long ago.” Add MS 88593, BL.
44. TH to AP, 12 Jan. 1975. 16.3, MSS 644, Emory. Ruth Fainlight agreed with Ted. No women’s libber, she said, “would want to be the perfect wife.” In this respect, Fainlight felt Plath was “terribly oppressed by the masculine principle.” Harriet Rosenstein interview with Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe, 1970. 1.25, MSS 1489, Emory.
45. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 1970. 1.6, MSS 1489, Emory.
46. Anon., “Olwyn Hughes: Grande Dame
, Under Siege,” Camden Scallywag (May 1992): 24–25.
47. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Edward Lucie-Smith, 1970. 2.17, MSS 1489, Emory.
48. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 22 Sept. 1962. L2, 830.
49. SP, “Conversation Among the Ruins,” Collected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), 21.
50. CPTH, 1078.
51. TH to Anne Stevenson, autumn 1986. LTH, 520–21.
52. TH to Lucas Myers, 14 Feb. 1987. LTH, 537–38.
53. Ibid., 536.
54. A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 30.
55. TH to SP, 4 Oct. 1956. LTH, 56.
56. EF interview with Suzette Macedo, Oct. 1999. EFP.
57. Elizabeth Sigmund, “Sylvia in Devon: 1962,” Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, Edward Butscher, ed. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1977), 102.
58. SP to AP, 19 Apr. 1956. L1, 1166.
59. J, 412.