The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 1: 1940-1956

Editors Steinberg (These Ghostly Archives) and Kukil (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath) present the first of two volumes collecting the entire available oeuvre of Plath’s letters, many published here for the first time. As they note, more than 700 letters have been lost, destroyed, or kept in private hands. The collection, which includes 838 letters, provides both a fascinating window into Plath’s life and a social history of the 1940s and ’50s as seen through white middle-class eyes. Most letters are to Plath’s mother, Aurelia, written from various summer camps, Smith College, and Cambridge, where Plath studied on a Fulbright scholarship. Almost always ecstatically upbeat, they document the extent to which Plath performed a happy role for her mother, whether she is praising an “amazing telegram” from Aurelia or exulting in the “glorious country-clubby life” she is leading at Smith. The few letters to her friend Ann Davidow-Goodman, her brother Warren, and her boyfriends offer glimpses of a different, gloomier side. Only a handful allude to her attempted suicide at age 20; most revealing is a December 28, 1953 letter to correspondent Eddie Cohen. Worshipful letters to Ted Hughes, whom Plath married in 1958, reveal her increasing abjection and dependence—“you must scold me, beat me, help me.” Because they provide a largely distorted look at her troubled life, the letters deserve fuller annotation. Nevertheless, this is a valuable, significant addition to the body of Plath scholarship. (Oct.)