Happy Summer, Plathies. Incredibly, to me, Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation will be published in the United States on July 9, less than two weeks from now. It will be out in the UK August 23. If you are in the Bay Area, you can come see me launch the book at
You write that Plath was a victim of campus sexual assault. Do you have any references for this? I have read her journals and letters and I don’t recall her ever mentioning this.
Plath describes being assaulted by an army veteran named Bill in her Unabridged Journals during her freshman year at Smith College. She was also assaulted when she was a student at the Harvard Summer School in the summer of 1954. She was not, to the best of our knowledge, keeping a diary at the time. This was reported in her roommate, Nancy Hunter Steiner's, memoir, "A Closer Look At Ariel" (1973).
You write that Plath was a victim of campus sexual assault. Do you have any references for this? I have read her journals and letters and I don’t recall her ever mentioning this.
Plath describes being assaulted by an army veteran named Bill in her Unabridged Journals during her freshman year at Smith College. She was also assaulted when she was a student at the Harvard Summer School in the summer of 1954. She was not, to the best of our knowledge, keeping a diary at the time. This was reported in her roommate, Nancy Hunter Steiner's, memoir, "A Closer Look At Ariel" (1973).
This is amazing and I’m already excited about your next book and that you are both a survivor and a fighter. You inspire me, my friend. ❤️