The Journals of Sylvia Plath: Amazon.co.uk: Sylvia Plath: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

"I have experienced love, sorrow, madness and if I cannot make these experiences meaningful, no new experience will help me". --Sylvia Plath, November 15, 1959.

In the decades that have followed the suicide of Sylvia Plath in February 1963, much has been written and speculated about her life; most particularly her marriage to fellow-poet Ted Hughes and her last months spent writing the stark, confessional poems that became Ariel and that posthumously made her name. The myths surrounding Plath were intensified by the strong grip her estate--managed by Hughes and his sister Olwyn--had over the release of her work. Sylvia Plath kept journals from the age of 11 until her death at 30. Previously only available in an abridged American edition, with heavy black scorings out of passages that Ted Hughes did not at the time want read, The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 is the first unabridged publication of Plath's diaries, scrupulously transcribed (with every spelling mistake and grammatical error left intact) and annotated by Karen V. Kukil, curator at Plath's US alma mater, Smith College.

The Journals show the breathless adolescent obsessed with her burgeoning sexuality, the serious university student competing to get the highest grades while engaging in the human merry-go-round of 1950s dating, the graduate year spent at Cambridge University where Plath's auspicious first meeting with Ted Hughes took place; their marriage a few months later ("He is a genius. I his wife"). Plath's documentation of the two years (1957-1959) the couple spent in the US teaching and writing highlights explicitly the dilemma of the late 1950s' woman--still swaddled in expectations of domesticity, yet attempting to forge her own independent professional and personal life. This period also reveals in detail the therapy sessions in which Plath lets loose her antipathy for her mother and her grief at her father's death when she was eight--a contrast to the bright, all-American persona she presented to her mother in the correspondence that was published as Letters Home. There are some notable omissions in terms of chronology. Plath's breakdown during the summer of 1953, attempted suicide and hospitalisation are not covered in any great detail in her journals, but she recorded the events minutely in her one novel, The Bell Jar. Fragments of diaries exist after 1959, which saw the couple's return to England and rural retreat in Devon, the birth of their two children, and their separation in late 1962. An extended piece on the illness and death of an elderly neighbour during this period is particularly affecting and was later turned into the poem "Berck-Plage". Much has been made of the "lost diaries" that Plath kept until her suicide--one simply appears to have vanished, the other was burnt by Hughes after her death. It would seem rapacious to wish for more details of Plath's despair in her final days, however. This was crystallised in the poems that became Ariel, and this is what the voice of her journals ultimately send the reader back to: Plath's life has for too long been obfuscated by anecdote, distorting her major contribution to late 20th-century literature. As she wrote in "Kindness": "The blood jet is poetry. There is no stopping it". --Catherine Taylor

Product Description

An exact and complete transcription of the journals kept by Sylvia Plath over the last twelve years of her life. Sylvia Plath kept a record of her life from the age of eleven until her death at thirty. The journals are characterized by the vigorous immediacy with which she records her inner thoughts and feelings and the intricacies of her daily life. Apart from being a key source for her early writing, they give us an intimate portrait of the writer who was to produce in the last seven months of her life the extraordinary poems which have secured her reputation as one of the greatest of twentieth century poets. Plath's adult years, from 1950 to 1962, are the focus of this edition, which includes an exact transcription of the twenty-three journals and journal fragments owned by Smith College. They offer a chronicle of her life: student days at Smith College; her time at Cambridge University where she met and later married the poet Ted Hughes; the two years spent working and living in New England; the couple's return to England and life in Devon, including the birth of their two children, before the marriage broke down in 1962.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

9 reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars

Write a customer review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

Essential reading for all who appreciate Plath's work 16 April 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Since Plath's suicide in 1963, many people have attempted to search for answers in Plath's writing as to why she chose to take her life. This collection of journals is satisfying not because it can provide answers to why she killed herself (we will never have the definitive answer to that, and besides, her last two journals prior to the suicide are not included here - one was lost, the other destroyed by Ted Hughes). No, reading these journals is satisfying because the writer exudes pure talent. Whilst reading you are forced to stand back, awe-struck, at the skill with which she could write, even at the age of eighteen. What we see is someone who is driven, someone with aspirations, and a desire to be successful in everything she does. And yet, alongside this ambition, is someone full of rage and insecurity. Plath's desires battled against one another - the need to be a well-respected, published writer: 'I depend too desperately on getting my poems, my little glib poems, accepted by the New Yorker', and the desire to be a wife and mother, and enter the world of pleasant domesticity: 'I long to permeate the matter of this world: to become anchored to life by laundry and lilacs, daily bread and fried eggs...'

I could not recommend this book more highly, whether you are an admirer of Plath's work or not, and anyone wishing to become a writer themselves could certainly do worse than to look to collection for inspiration.

Comment |

Was this review helpful to you?

Yes

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful

A BEST FRIEND FOR YOUR BOOKSHELF 14 Nov 2002

By Kelvin MacGregor

The good thing about journals is that after you've read them you can dip in again at any page and get caught up in that day's events, action, dilemmas, reflections; once you become more familiar with the contents you can return to favourite passages for pleasure. It's almost like having a best friend on your bookshelf. The biggest barrier to anyone contemplating writing down their innermost thoughts is crossing that line of inhibition and saying what you really feel about the most intimate of things, without censoring yourself (with the fear of friends or family possibly reading your journal) or for feeling stupid or embarrassed about opening up on the page and seeing your thoughts in print.
Not many people could write a diary account of their life as honestly as Sylvia Plath. It amazes me how disciplined - and with so much devotion - she was able to 'jot down' day after day the beautifully written, perfect prose in her journals; and from such an early age as well, eighteen (she actually started keeping journals in childhood but this edition covers only her adult life). In her own unmistakable voice we see 'Sivvy' (as she liked to call herself) as the young, naive teenager on the threshold of life, dreaming of the romantic love affairs she longs for; the excited college student working on a New York magazine, an experience she later used for her only novel The Bell Jar; trips to Paris and her honeymoon in Spain; married life with Ted Hughes, mother of his two children; and all the time living in the shadow of the black depression that would descend on her without any warning.
With Sylvia Plath's tragic suicide you can't help but think: what a waste of life, what a wasted talent. Perhaps it was because she knew her own psyche best - she was constantly trying to figure out her feelings on the pages of her journal - that she was in such a hurry to get everything down before the inevitable happened. Maybe she just burned herself out too soon. The final flurry of stunningly original poems that would later become the posthumous collection Ariel are testament to the short life she was able to pack into the pages of her hefty Journals.
The only thing that spoils this otherwise marvellous new edition of the Journals is editor Karen V. Kukil's decision to list the notes of identification of people and places at the back of the book instead of footnotes on the bottom of the pages; it's irritating and bothersome to have to continually flick back and forth and use two different bookmarks to keep your place.
Two other books can be read in conjunction with the Journals, and I highly recommend them both. Sylvia Plath's Letters Home - written mainly to her mother Aurelia Plath, who edited this volume of correspondence and also provides biographical content about her daughter's life in a lengthy introduction and accompanying side-notes to letters when needed for clarification. Birthday Letters is a beautiful collection of poems by Ted Hughes, written as letters of reminiscence about his life with Sylvia Plath in reply to her account of their marriage in the Journals.
Other related books I recommend are the biographies: Rough Magic by Paul Alexander, Anne Stevenson's Bitter Fame, Sylvia Plath: A Beginner's Guide by Gina Wisker.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

"A passionate, fragmentary girl" 29 Mar 2000

Format:Hardcover

I was skeptical about this publication. I already own the abridged edition of Plath's journals and wasn't sure that this book would provide new information. But I'm glad I ordered it. The wealth of material provides a more comprehensive perspective. The book follows Plath from the insecure teenage years through her first breakdown, her first serious love affair and up to her marriage and finally motherhood. It details her struggles with depression, but most of all her incredible vitality and love of life - of colours, textures, food, sex and literature - seem to jump off the pages. Plath's journals for her last three years are not available; one was destroyed, the other stolen. And the remaining journals are full of fragments and missing bits, raising more questions than they answer. The fascination of this book is that the enigma of Sylvia Plath remains. At times she is a trite, boy crazy college girl, then she is suicidally depressed, then struggling with sinusitis, writing and working, hoping and dreaming, loving and despising, posing for an audience, manipulating to hide her vulnerability, paradoxically always striving for authenticity in her life and work. This book doesn't answer the question: Who was Sylvia? - except maybe in her own words: "A passionate, fragmentary girl".