In the blog post from 22 April 2010 , I vastly understated the extent of the holdings at the University of Virginia that regard Sylvia Plath. Initially I thought the collection just contained the eight books formerly belonging to Sylvia Plath, among them her hallowed copy of the Saint Botolph's Review . However, I recently (recently being August 2010! Shameful to have been drafting and revising something for this long...) stumbled upon another title that they hold, the Guinness Poetry Award, 1960-1961: winning poems  - which printed her poem "Insomniac" - and discovered that in all the University of Virginia (UVA) in fact holds several hundred items by or about Sylvia Plath. The Virgo catalog shows more than 260 records. UVA acquired their "Sylvia Plath Collection" in July 1993; and it, along with the Plath collection held at the Wilson Library of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), makes these two mid-Atlantic states real archival powerhouse...

Earlier this week I updated the layout of the thumbnail pages for several of the book cover galleries on A celebration, this is , my website for who? ...Sylvia Plath (aka sylviaplath.info). The galleries I updated are the poetry books , prose books , and periodical covers . For these pages, the title and other bibliographic information have been taken from kind of being hidden (you had to hover over the thumbnail image to see it) and placed it directly below the thumbnail. I hope this helps to explain what it is you are viewing. You can still click on the thumbnail to see the bigger cover image, but you loose the data about the book. So, you'll have to remember what you clicked... The other cover galleries ( Limited editions ; Books, Criticisms, Memoirs, etc. ; and Translations ) remain mostly the same. In order to see any relevant title or bibliographic information you will need to simply hover your mouse pointer over the thumbnail to see it.

Earlier this week, I launched new thumbnail pages on my website for Sylvia Plath ( A celebration, this is ). The new thumbnail pages are a bit fancier than before, and I hope that it is an enhancement that makes being on the website more enjoyable. The main landing page for the photo galleries is here . In each page, when you click a thumbnail, the image will pop up. Beneath the image will be some data about the book or place. For the thumbnail gallery of places Plath lived in, visited, or wrote about in her creative works and personal papers, etc. there is a caption beneath the image, but because of space, referential information still appears next to the thumbnail (this happens on one of the book pages, too). Depending on the resolution of your screen and the size, some of the text in the pop up box may appear below below the bottom of your screen. If you reduce the screen from 100% to something like 75% you should be able to see all the text. To escape the pop-up, click the X in ...

Hello, the first of some biggish changes was activated today on my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is . On the homepage (linked just above), I have added a Google custom search tool. This will enable web browsers to search the entire website, which I hope means that you will find your content even faster. When you type in the search box, a new tab or window will appear with the search results (they frequently appear beneath a Google ad or two...sorry, it was not avoidable without paying a fee...). Thanks to three of my great Plath friends for testing this feature out.  Please let me know how you like it (or if you don't). The decision to have results open in a new tab was made because this way your search results are saved in the original tab. If done the other way, where the result is opened in the same/original tab, if you click the back browser your search query is lost and thus you'd have to do it again (one year in every ten, perhaps). The next cha...

In a New York Times article " Next Big Thing for the Last Big Thing " by Matthew Healey, Julia Stiles provides an update and insight into her forthcoming screen adaptation of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar .

Univeristy of Chicago Press, who is the US distributor for the British Library's Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath , sent me an email this morning announcing that the CD was available now. I'm a little confused by this as earlier in the week I was told it would be available on 15 June. However, the website does indicate it it "available now." Remember, you can receive a 10% discount on what Lorna Bradbury of The Telegraph calls "an exquisite recording" by clicking here . Shipping is $5.

Should I be alarmed that I had so much joy looking for clippings? Should I be alarmed that I found quite a few absent from my bibliography which now means I'll have to go trolling through microfilm back home? At one point today I had 7 different documents and one spreadsheet open on my computer as well as Google , A celebration, this is , and this blog . There is so much in the archive - there really is no way to know that what I've looking for - that what I'm looking at - hasn't already been published before. I think the bibliography could go a long way towards reducing some kind of redundancy, if there is redundancy, in published articles and books. But, on my website I have a list of known (or a few supposedly known) works by Plath. I found accidentally about a dozen new poems or story titles that will help to make the list more complete. Plath's early diaries are full of lovely, wonderful, charming and accomplished artworks. Each time I see them ...

Out just in time for the holidays is Lisa Narbeshuber's Confessing Cultures: Politics and the Self in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath (E L S Monograph Series). Whilst Amazon says they are out of stock, and the book is not listed on ELS's website , I've heard the title has been published. You can order through Amazon above or through the publisher at [email protected] . For more information, please see my previous post from 21 August .

Over the last few months, I've been adding books and information to Sylvia Plath's Library on LibraryThing . Having recently re-read Plath's Journals (edited by Karen V. Kukil, 2000), I added information about what books Plath was reading, and when. The information contained in the catalog includes the date read and page number in the 2000 Journals of Sylvia Plath (or, in the US, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath ). The best way to find these new books is to search for "Kukil" in the search box when viewing the cataloged books in library. There is still plenty of information to add, but wanted to let you know that reconstructing her library is a work in progress. If you have information on titles not listed in the library, or information to add to the library, please do not hesitate to contact me. Sincere thanks in advance.

I'd like to call your attention to a new page on A celebration, this is , my website for Sylvia Plath. The new page is a thumbnail gallery of periodical covers which published Plath's poems, stories, etc. As I find new images they will be added. Enjoy! Many people are to be thanked for their contributions to this page. You know who you are: with deep thanks. To introduce this page, I'm publishing here the cover of My Weekly . It was in this issue that Plath's short story "The Perfect Place" appeared on 28 October 1961. Drafted in late 1960 under the title of "The Lucky Stone", this story went unacknowledged for more than 40 years. To read more on its discovery - with the aide of Irralie Doel and Lena Friesen, see my essay in Plath Profiles . See here also the first page of the story.

Below is an updated list of titles expected to be published this year, as could be found through various sources. Books by Sylvia Plath: In the US: The Bell Jar . Harper Perennial P.S. (3 November 2009) In the UK: The Bell Jar . Faber & Faber 80th Anniversary Edition. (7 May 2009) Selected Poems . Faber & Faber 80th Anniversary Edition. (7 May 2009) Works about Sylvia Plath: The Plath Cabinet by Catherine Bowman. Four Way. (US: 1 April 2009/UK: 15 April 2009) Sylvia Plath by Connie Ann Kirk. Prometheus Books. (US: 21 April 2009/UK: 1 April 2009 Sylvia Plath's Fiction: A Critical Study by Luke Ferretter. University of Edinburgh Press. (US: 15 May 2009/UK: 15 July 2009) Plath Profiles . Volume 2. ( World Wide Web : ca. August 2009) Plath Profiles is still accepting submissions for Volume 2. If you have an essay, book review, or work inspired by Plath, consider Plath Profiles . Click here for submission guidelines and deadlines . Essays, book reviews, and...

The server that " A celebration, this is " is hosted on crashed and needed to be rebuilt, which the host did quite quickly. I've been through the pages and all the content seems back online. If you notice any broken links or anything, please let me know. A Sylvia Plath year in review will be forthcoming, sometime next week. Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I hope it's a nice, happy, healthy and safe holiday season.

In time for October - to what can be regarded as "Sylvia Plath's month" - the new " A celebration, this is " is online. The design is all new and it should be easier to navigate. It is also roughly the ten year anniversary of this website for Sylvia Plath. There are a couple of significant changes that I would like to point out. Individual pages for poetry ( Ariel, Ariel: The Restored Edition, The Collected Poems, The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees , and audio recordings) and prose ( The Bell Jar, Johnny Panic, The Journals, Letters Home, The Unabridged Journals , and Children's stories) are now merged together into Poetry Works and Prose Works pages.

My website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is , is coming back online slowly. Most of the book covers are back online, as are all the web pages (I hope!). The photographs of Sylvia Plath places should come online fully during the course of the day and should be completed by tomorrow. Thank you again for your patience during this downtime. A celebration, this is has been online for ten years! Thank you to all of the visitors over the years. Update: All images should be back on the site. If you find that this statement is false, please contact me via email and let me know which image you were trying to view. All the pages seem to load, too, which is good. Thank you again for your patience. - Peter

Frances Leviston review's Drives by Leontia Flynn over at The Guardian (Buy it: UK US ). This is Flynn's second collection of poetry, the first being These Days (2004). People interested in fresh, new, wonderful, and real poetry will enjoy Flynn's work; but my reason for mentioning the book here - aside from my enjoyment of her poetry - is that the collection includes a poem titled "Sylvia Plath's Sinus Condition". Good news! I know what happened to my website! It was deleted! Fortunately, I have back-up files for it. I anticipate it will be back online before mid-September. I apologize for this downtime.

There haven't been many news stories recently about Sylvia Plath, though her name has appeared in various articles. On 4 July, David Baddiel at The Times reviews the new movie about Dylan Thomas called The Edge of Love . He dedicates a paragraph to questioning the purpose of the movie Sylvia (2003). So, I will just say that I have added a new web page to my website, A celebration, this is . The new page had to do with Plath's Audio recordings. Kate Moses has two recent essays in The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath (ed. Anita Helle, 2007) that are must reads for anyone interested in Plath's voice and Plath's recordings. And, for those who have never heard Plath's voice, the webpage lists the commercial releases. Plath Profiles is still working its way towards you! I think about 90-95% of the essays are ready to go. We're waiting for last edits on two papers. And, two will be delayed as the authoresses await word about permissions. Those two...

The publication date for the new edition of Sylvia Plath's The Collected Poems & the new Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams has been pushed back from 12 August to 2 September. However, the new cover for The Collected Poems is out. Please see the image to the left.

Well, some disappointing news regarding what promised to be a welcome addition to Sylvia Plath scholarship. Linda Wagner-Martin's Sylvia Plath's Poetry (Continuum) appears to be shelved due to permissions issues in England.

I have made some updates to sylviaplath.info; most of it cosmetic. I've extended the tables a bit. Also, I've re-designed the home page slightly, offering links to the individual photograph albums and book cover galleries! I hope these modifications make viewing easier! I do plan to add "next album" or "next gallery" links at some point, which might also improve your browsing experience. I've added a book cover to the Non-English page; the Swedish edition of The Journals of Sylvia Plath , which was a recent gift. Also, there is a new copy of The Bell Jar - from the Faber paper covered editions in the 1970s. I'm working on a new page with new content and new images! Hopefully it'll be up within a week. --- A note about Plath Profiles since I know there is a lot of interest. We're waiting for final edits on about three or four papers and waiting on permissions for the use of some images.

Greetings. I'd like to post here that a new web page is present on my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is . The new web page lists, chronologically, Plath's publications in periodicals, from her first poem in the Boston Herald in 1940 to excerpts from her Unabridged Journals in The Guardian in 2000 and more recently in 2003, excerpts of letters between Plath and Dorothea Krook in the now defunct London Magazine. The web page is online here and is filed under, more generally, the bibliographies section of the site.