Thursday, 22 December 2011

Sylvia Plath - the pleasure of odds and ends

This post is named after one of Plath's drawings from the Mayor exhibition as it is one of bits and pieces.

By Mid-January some gems will have arrived. Hughes' Howls and Whispers and Plath's Still Life with Pots and Fruit and there WILL be pictures.

Also, I have yet to find the annotator of my copy of The Colossus, but did uncover a Plath connection in the process so far. The bookseller revealed the annotator was a 'Claire'. Dear friends in England went through property records from 1960 - 1963 for me for the address in the annotation (see earlier post) and uncovered a Claire there that I must chase down, and another dear friend uncovered a Claire living in the country who could be the annotator.

I contacted her, a lovely elderly woman, who was sadly not my annotator but who had met Plath, Hughes and Frieda through Elizabeth Sigmund. They had spent the day at this Claire's home when looking to move to Devon. This Claire seemed a little sad at not making much of an appearance anywhere in Plath's story, journals etc, but was happy to share her small connection with me and I was thankful for this. we have had several lovely email communications.

I found a Claire, a Plath linked generous Claire, but still wonder about the Colossus annotator.

the search continues...
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4 comments:

  1. Carl Rollyson26 December 2011 at 04:08

    Just discovered your blog and will now be following it. My biography, American Isis: The Life and Death of Sylvia Plath, will be published by St. Martin's Press on the 50th anniversary of her death, February 11, 2013. I found much new material and some of it will change, I believe, the story of her last two months.

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  2. Julia Gordon-Bramer11 January 2012 at 05:50

    Interesting about Claire. Can you tell us more about the annotations? Anything particularly insightful or relevant?

    I am looking forward to Carl Rollyson's book.

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  3. A Piece of Plathery11 January 2012 at 17:54

    Hi Julia, the comments about having coffee with Ted and Frieda are in an earlier post, the annotator also talks about hearing Plath read Mushrooms and how wilderness her voice is than Hughes' calm and control.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A Piece of Plathery13 January 2012 at 14:30

    Oops meant wildness, darn predictive text.

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