For All Things Yale: "The Yale Diaries"

Have a rewarding All Saints' or Samhain.

I was asked to see Aurelia Plath's estate in 2018 because no one else cared. How times have changed. Yale University's Beinecke Library staff says the Aurelia Plath and Warren Plath estates should open in its rare book room in December. I'm so excited I already want to post my plans and when I get there tell you what I see.

While this every-Tuesday blogspot continues, for all things Beinecke I wanted you with me on 1) a research diary/journal format 2) with no ads and free of charge 3) and video/audio and comment-friendly. I chose Substack for "The Yale Diaries," disabling all "pledge" and pay links. Free subscribers get posts emailed but they must register, and please know that in archive-induced ecstasy I might post at all hours and five times a day.

These new Plath Family collections have potential to radically alter Plath studies. Ten days in New Haven is costly and by choosing a suburban motel I cut lodging by half but this raised the cost of transportation to and from campus. So I am asking for your help with an estimated $420 for 10 days' local transportation. Just this once in this blog's history, here's a donate button. Any amount is heartening, but every $50 donation I will thank with a Tarot card reading or birth-chart reading for you or a friend. The secret is out: I lived by day in academia and nights and weekends as a reader of cards and horoscopes, pen-named Sylvia Sky. Yes cringe, but "she" published astrology books deeply scholarly or pop-snarky like ebook Sun Sign Confidential.

To further curry Sylvia Plath's favor I launched "The Yale Diaries" on her birthday. May it work as promised.

I've already posted the first entries at theyalediaries.substack.com. Or type that URL into the search bar. The Yale Diaries site is too recent to appear as yet in Google search results. I will look into posting a link on this sidebar. 

Thank you for joining your researcher on Plath studies' final frontier. -Catherine

Sweetly Picking Up Pieces

Here's a note from Sylvia Plath to her mother Aurelia Plath, dated by Aurelia 18 July 1962. Sylvia in this note was telling Aurelia how to feed and care for Frieda and Nick at Court Green, and manage Sylvia's housekeeper Nancy Axworthy while Sylvia was away on business.

Sylvia's note is "real nice" considering she'd banished houseguest Aurelia during the week of July 9, telling her to find a hotel. Not finding a room, Aurelia had by July 14 moved in with Sylvia's midwife Winifred Davies. Yet Aurelia was asked to visit daily to serve Sylvia as a free babysitter and cook. As much as Sylvia hated hosting her mother, Aurelia hated to babysit Sylvia, who reacting to her husband's cheating howled with grief and drove her car off the road, was so shattered and out-of-control that the local doctor sedated her. [1] In turn, Winifred Davies gave Aurelia a sleep aid. 

The above note was tucked into Aurelia's 1962 diary at the appropriate page and photographed in situ. It is part of Aurelia Plath's literary estate, which along with Warren Plath's literary estate was donated by the Plath family in February 2025 to Yale University's Beinecke Library. Its archivists are currently processing the donated materials. The note ends, "Love, Sivvy."

[1] Sylvia to Ruth Beuscher, 20 July 1962: "got the doctor to knock me out for 8 hours after a week of no eating or sleeping"