The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

Starred review from August 6, 2018
Completing the monumental task of collecting all of Plath’s known and available letters, this volume goes from her 24th birthday in October 1956 to a week before her suicide, at age 30, in February 1963. Opening on a young writer determined to publish and a deliriously happy newlywed gushing about her husband, fellow poet Ted Hughes, the book follows Plath as she finishes her Fulbright at Cambridge; teaches for a year at her alma mater, Smith College; and then returns to England to settle into a country house in Devon. The collection is mordantly fascinating as it reveals a brilliant, complex woman trying to carve out her own time for writing in between secretarial tasks for her husband (she typed his manuscripts), caring for their two children, and housework. The book becomes downright agonizing after Hughes leaves her and Plath is left fighting “the return of my madness,” even as she produces her best work, the poems comprising the collection Ariel, with a feeling of “writing in the blitz, bombs exploding all round.” Unobtrusively edited and scrupulously footnoted, this set of letters is a dazzling literary achievement, capturing the tender beauty of Plath’s richly lived, too short life.

Starred review from August 1, 2018
Six years of hope and joy end with a spiraling descent to suicide.Journals, soul-baring poems, autobiographical fiction, and several biographies and critical studies have made the trajectory and struggles of Sylvia Plath's (1932-1963) life familiar. Nevertheless, the second volume of her correspondence, edited, annotated, and introduced by Plath scholars Steinberg and Kukil, offers new revelations: unabridged letters to her mother and letters to the psychiatrist who treated Plath in the U.S. until 1959 and by letter after Plath settled in England. In an exceptionally sensitive foreword, Plath's daughter writes of her stunned reaction when these intimate letters came to light in 2016, her trepidation about reading them, and the insights they gave her about her parents' intense, almost claustrophobic love and the dramatic end of their marriage. It was her generous and well-considered decision to allow them into this volume. In hundreds of letters to her mother, Plath ebulliently and insistently conveys her happiness about writing, motherhood, and--until she discovers Hughes' affair--her marriage. She portrays Hughes as nothing less than an Adonis: "a kind, handsome, wonderful person"; virile and attractive; a genius who, without a doubt, will achieve greatness as a poet. He tenderly nurses her through colds, flu, and a miscarriage and happily plays with his daughter in the mornings so that Plath can write. Even when struggling financially, even when they both try to write in a cramped two-room apartment, Plath betrays no chink in the gleaming surface of their marriage. In 1959, though, when both are in residence at Yaddo, she admits, "I am so happy we can work apart, for that is what we've really needed." Correspondents include Plath's brother; Hughes' parents (to whom she writes ingratiating encomiums about their son) and his overbearing sister; friends, fellow poets, and assorted relatives; and many editors who publish her work. Although worries and anxiety occasionally creep in, not until the end does she become overwhelmed with frustration, anger, and a desperate fear of madness.An exemplary edition offering a textured portrait of an iconic poet.

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October 1, 2018

This final compilation collecting the correspondence of poet/novelist Plath (1932-63) follows the first volume covering the years 1940-56 and the beginning of her marriage to fellow writer Ted Hughes (1930-98). The letters disclose the couple in single-minded pursuit of literary recognition. Writing to relatives and friends, Plath relates the particulars of their poems with news of rejection or publication, and she is marginally less obsessive about her cooking, her handsome genius husband, and their finances. Although the birth of children Frieda and Nicholas are a joy, constant care hampers her poetic creativity. Nevertheless, she is uplifted by the release of her first poetry collection, The Colossus, and her novel, The Bell Jar. In a letter to her mother she writes, "our life together seems to be the whole foundation of my being." But the dark heart of this anthology are the 14 letters (1960-63) addressed to Dr. Beuscher in the wake of Hughes's infidelity and the collapse of her "foundation," which grow progressively desperate as Hughes's deceit so festers her mind and imagination that Plath whorls again into a deep depression resulting in suicide. VERDICT Expect fierce controversy and Plathitudes. [See Prepub Alert, 4/9/18.]--Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal

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Starred review from October 1, 2018
The second volume in this literary landmark, following The Letters of Sylvia Plath, v.1: 1940-1956? (2017), is a shattering chronicle of a woman's struggle to be both a pathbreaking artist and a domestic paragon. It begins shortly after Plath has precipitously married the English poet Ted Hughes and embarked industriously on earning degrees, teaching, working as a secretary, writing torrentially, serving as muse to her beloved, and managing their blossoming careers and meager finances. They are a mutually inspiring, prolific literary pair, until Plath's first book is accepted; they leave London for the English countryside, and she gives birth to their two children. When Plath realizes that Hughes is having an affair, her sense of self is vaporized; the foundation of her relentlessly effortful life is detonated. Within this maelstrom, Plath pounds out long, vivid, detailed, achingly candid letters, primarily to her steadfast mother, while some of her most scorching missives are to her American psychiatrist, Dr. Ruth Beuscher, including one written a week before Plath's suicide in February 1963, published in full for the first time in this meticulously edited and deeply illuminating compendium. Together, these two volumes accentuate the wonder of all that Plath accomplished by age 30, and her poetry, fiction, journals, and letters will remain forever alive, daring, urgent, and electrifying.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)