What's Missing From Sylvia Plath Archives

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First, the primary Plath archive at Indiana University's Lilly Library isn't pure Sylvia Plath. It's her mother Aurelia Plath's edit of her accumulation of Sylvia's papers and memorabilia, 3000 pieces spanning Plath's lifetime, plus letters Aurelia wrote and received up to 1974. Generous, remarkable. Yet Plath scholar Dr. Anita Helle speaks truly when she writes, "It is in the character of the modern archive to be both overflowing and incomplete." [1]

Here then are some of the items I and others see "missing" from Sylvia Plath archives. In print are thousands of pages, millions of words, of Plath's writings, drawn from multiple archives and coaxed out of private collections, so much we can hardly read it all, but it's just human to fixate on what's missing, like the shepherd with 99 sheep.

These exist but can't be accessed: 

Telegram to Ted Hughes, February 1957, from New York's Poetry Center, saying Hughes has won the prize of publication for his manuscript The Hawk in the Rain.

Aurelia Plath's own journals, referenced in Letters Home, are in a private collection. 

A few letters from Sylvia to Aurelia and acquaintance Lynne Lawner.

Ted Hughes around 1990 began hinting that he did not destroy Sylvia Plath's last journal. In a recent Substack interview [2], archivist and Plath editor Peter K. Steinberg said he knows where the last two missing journals are, and in an online talk he added that they are sealed until 2063.

Of Aurelia Plath's letters to Sylvia, some survived into the 1970s, because Aurelia had wanted to publish a few in Letters Home. In the 1980s she told Dr. Richard Larschan that nearly all her letters to Sylvia -- only ten are in archives -- had been burned, but never said Sylvia burned them. I say a better candidate for the "burning" is Olwyn Hughes, Ted's sister and Plath's censorious "literary agent." Larschan said that Aurelia spoke sadly of the loss but said no more. 

Conspicuously absent from the Lilly archive's file of Sylvia's unpublished short stories are the manuscripts of "The Mummy" and "The Trouble-Making Mother," written in 1959. Olwyn Hughes in 1989 asserted that "The Mummy," in her custody, "went missing 20 years ago." [3] Peter K. Steinberg found a fragment of that story at Emory University's Hughes archive and it appears in The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath (795-96).

Where these are, I don't know: 

Some very consequential communications were possibly destroyed soon after creation or receipt because they caused such pain:

-Telegram, February 1963, from Ted Hughes to Sylvia's aunt Dorothy Benotti, saying "Sylvia died yesterday."

-Letter, July 1953, from Harvard University Summer School denying Sylvia admission to Frank O'Connor's short-story-writing class.

Missing: Any records from autumn 1958 when Aurelia and siblings Dottie and Frank argued over housing their aging father and spending his cash. Sylvia briefly mentioned the conflict but Aurelia certainly withheld specifics or conveyed them to Sylvia over the telephone.

Missing: Some tell-all letters Sylvia wrote to her in-laws when Ted left her, letters supposedly stolen by one of Ted's girlfriends. [4]

Missing: Hours before her suicide, Sylvia paid her downstairs neighbor for stamps so she might mail some letters, but the letters were in her flat, unsent, when she died. Ted did open and read the letter addressed to Aurelia, because later he advised Aurelia not to read it. Aurelia told Richard Larschan she did not read it.

Lost: 

The draft, written in 1962, of Sylvia's unfinished novel Doubletake, or Double Exposure, about an artist whose husband cheats on her. [5] Ted and his sister Olwyn and Assia Wevill all read this draft, variously said to be "60" or "130" pages, before it was lost. Ted said Aurelia stole it, but that makes no sense because Aurelia couldn't publish or sell it: Ted held the copyright.

Draft pages of Aurelia Plath's attempt at a novel about her mother's girlhood, its working title Teena Marie, are mentioned in a letter Aurelia wrote in 1960 and in an interview from 1975.

Plath-Hughes divorce papers.

Sylvia Plath's letters to Chicago confidant Eddie Cohen. 

Most likely never existed:

Unabridged Journals editor Karen V. Kukil says "Sylvia Plath did not keep a journal her senior year at college" (p. 89). Some fans insist this break in journaling is out of character and a journal for 1954-55 must exist. If you are curious, Sylvia documented that eventful year in her letters, and many friends such as Nancy Hunter, Peter Davison, Richard Sassoon, and Gordon Lameyer are quoted in Plath biographies or wrote memoirs covering that time.

Of Plath's "second novel of joy and romance," which Aurelia said was titled Hill of Leopards and Sylvia read to her and then burned, no trace has been found.

For sale, if you want to buy them:

Painting, signed by Sylvia Plath [top of page], $135,000, AbeBooks. Painted when Plath was 16. On the same page are about 20 other Sylvia Plath collectibles at scary prices. 

Ebay has a few vintage first-edition copies of The Bell Jar by "Victoria Lucas" (1963) and by "Sylvia Plath" (1966) plus many other Plath-adjacent items. If a book is a "first edition" but also a "second [or later] printing," or minus a jacket, it is of dubious resale value. 

[1] Helle, Anita. "Reading Plath Photographs" in The Unraveling Archives (2007), Helle, ed., p. 184.

[2] Turrell, James, "James Meets Peter K. Steinberg," Substack titled "James on. . . Everything," 4 October 2024. 

[3] Hughes, Olwyn, "Sylvia Plath's Biographers," New York Review, 7 December 1989. 

[4] Trinidad, David,  "Hidden in Plain Sight: On Sylvia Plath's Missing Journals," Plath Profiles, Vol. 3, Autumn 2010.

[5] Clark, Heather, Red Comet, p. 825.

How Much Money Aurelia Got For Sylvia's Letters

It was such a big event in Aurelia's life I had to pursue the question although told the answer was confidential, none of my business, they didn't know or they wouldn't say.

Aurelia Plath was paid $190,000 for her daughter Sylvia's letters and other items now in the Sylvia Plath mss. at the Lilly Library at Indiana University at Bloomington.

The sale, through a dealer, was completed in March 1977.

$190,000 in 1977 is worth in 2024 either $985,150 or $1,101,400. In either case, a cool million.

Worth it, for Sylvia's letters home, early short stories, diaries, paintings, and memorabilia: more than 3,000 items. Aurelia opened the Lilly collection to the public having decided what the public should see. I think she removed Sylvia's "lost" short stories "The Trouble-Making Mother" and "The Mummy." But let's admire Aurelia's amazing foresight in amassing and preserving for 45 years this dazzling literary trove and making it available. Many a scholar has made money from it.

Aurelia's writings and correspondence never mention meeting an appraiser or dealer, or negotiations over the price and dealer's fee.

Aurelia -- in 1977, age 70 -- for tax reasons divided the $190,000 into 10 annual payments. [1]

I heard more than once that the dealer held back some items and sold them.

Aurelia at a later time donated further Plath materials to the Lilly Library's Sylvia Plath archive.

[1] In 1977 a single filer with a taxable income of $19,000 (in 2024 money, $100,000) was taxed at 34 percent. $190,000 would have been taxed at 70 percent. TaxFoundation.org.

"But You Stopped the Piston!"

Aurelia Plath shorthand annotation on London Magazine, p. 32

 

London Magazine in April 1963 and Encounter, in October 1963, published some of Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" poems, hot properties after she had died. Encounter published a group of ten. Aurelia Plath collected and preserved magazines that published Sylvia's work, read them thoroughly, and wrote on them in longhand and Gregg shorthand, mourning or talking back to her famously dead daughter, or guiding future scholars and biographers to what they ought to notice.

In 1983 Aurelia donated her collection to Smith College's Plath archive. In Boxes 7 and 8, Dr. Gary Leising of Utica University found two British litmags with Aurelia's shorthand annotations alongside two Plath poems, and sent me photos. As you know, I read shorthand. These annotations express mixed grief and fury.

Sylvia's poem "Years" (a favorite of mine), in London Magazine, includes these lines:

What I love is

The piston in motion.

Aurelia underlined and penciled alongside of this, "But you stopped the piston!"

She was speaking directly to Sylvia, a rarity among Aurelia's annotations. Aurelia visited this page more than once, adding an exclamation point in black ink. I think Sylvia was referring to a different type of piston, but Aurelia had her own opinion.

In Encounter's shorthand annotation, on "Daddy," -- this is the context:

Encounter, October 1963

Penciled in shorthand next to "The vampire who said he was you" is " = Ted."

Understand that Aurelia knew the poem's references long before critics caught on. For years, through interview after interview, in 1966, in 1970, Aurelia withheld the "vampire's" identity, never said the "black telephone" incident was real and she had witnessed it. Ted Hughes told Aurelia she must stay silent about the circumstances of Sylvia's death or never see Sylvia's children again. Aurelia would not risk that. 

So under this gag rule, keeping secret the "why" of Sylvia's suicide that puzzled a generation of critics and fans -- had Sylvia Plath been in love with death? A victim of incest? A gifted woman driven mad? Was a crazy bitch? -- when journalists and biographers probed, Aurelia changed the subject, or simpered, said nothing and passed the cake plate.

But Aurelia could annotate. In shorthand, which no one else in the family could read, Aurelia penciled Ted's name. Besides pencil, in Encounter there is black ink, disclosing a second visit to the page, this time singling out identifying details. Dr. Leising added that on London Magazine's table of contents, Aurelia "marked a cross followed by the date of Sylvia's death. That little detail was, to me, a very poignant reminder of Aurelia's grief."

Not only that: where the poem says "I was ten when they buried you," Aurelia circled "ten" and wrote "8." Encounter's headnote, written by Ted, says Sylvia was nine when her father died. Aurelia corrected it to 8. These annotations, not dated, were probably made before it was widely known that Sylvia Plath's father died when she was eight: before 1975, when Aurelia Plath's preface to Sylvia's Letters Home made that clear.