Doing the Numbers

In the Lilly Library's Sylvia Plath archive collection of correspondence known as Plath mss. II, boxes 1-6a, we can find Aurelia Plath's shorthand annotations. The first instance is on correspondence dated July 8, 1948 and the last dated July 1974.

Mrs. Plath wrote her Gregg shorthand annotations on letters and/or their envelopes -- very often on their envelopes. She was careful not to overwrite or deface any of Sylvia's letters (except the two black-marker redactions we can see in The Letters of Sylvia Plath, volume 2).

Of the Gregg shorthand instances, many relate to Aurelia Plath's editing of Letters Home in 1973-74. These, always in margins, are "typed" or "excerpted" or "omit" or "used."

Of the Gregg shorthand instances, two were so vigorously erased as to be illegible, but they are recognizable as Gregg shorthand.

Mrs. Plath made many more annotations in longhand on the correspondence than she made in shorthand.

Tart Remarks From 1956

In May 1956, Sylvia's letters to Aurelia were gushing about her wonderful fiance Ted Hughes. Aurelia had never met Ted; she knew only that her daughter had met him three months before and that he was a poet with no job. Aurelia inked some Gregg shorthand notes on the letters, transcribed here for the first time:

On a letter of May 18, 1956, AP wrote: "About settled with Ted! I hope this will work out! Please God."

On a letter of May 26, 1956:  Next to SP's text "[o]ur children will have such fun," AP wrote,  "if they don't starve first."