The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962: Transcripts from the Original Manuscripts at Smith College

The complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath--essential reading for anyone who has been moved and fascinated by the poet’s life and work.

＂A genuine literary event.... Plath’s journals contain marvels of discovery.＂ --The New York Times Book Review

Sylvia Plath’s journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet’s personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons.

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. She began publishing poems and stories at a young age and by the time she entered Smith College had won several poetry prizes. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Cambridge, England, and married British poet Ted Hughes in London in 1956. The young couple moved to the States, where Plath became an instructor at Smith College. Later, they moved back to England, where Plath continued writing poetry and wrote her novel, The Bell Jar, which was first published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in England in 1963. On February 11, 1963, Plath committed suicide. Her Collected Poems, published posthumously in 1981, won the Pulitzer Prize.

Karen V. Kukil is Associate Curator of Rare Books at Smith College, with particular responsibility for superervising scholarly use of the Sylvia Plath Collection.