Karen V. Kukil - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

I would like to thank the Hughes family, particularly Frieda and Nicholas Hughes, for giving me this opportunity to edit the journals of Sylvia Plath. It has been a labor of love. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to Smith College, particularly Martin Antonetti, curator of rare books, and Sarah M. Pritchard who kindly gave me a seven-month leave of absence from my responsibilities in the Mortimer Rare Book Room to complete this project. I would also like to thank the chairman of Faber and Faber, Matthew Evans, as well as editors Jonathan Riley, Jane Feaver, Charles Boyle, designer Ron Costley, and publishing director Joanna Mackle for publishing the manuscript. In addition, I would like to thank editors LuAnn Walther and Diana Secker Larson at Anchor Books for their help with the American edition, along with publicity director Jennifer Marshall and production editor Barbara Richard.

A number of family, friends, and professional contacts of Sylvia Plath provided information reflected in these notes. In addition to Frieda Hughes, I would like to thank Warren Plath and his daughter Susan Plath Winston. I also appreciate the information received from Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, Joan Maxwell Bramwell, Mr and Mrs M. Michael Cantor, Dr O. Donald Chrisman, Edward M. Cohen, Peter H. Davison, Dorothy Davy, Rev. Max D. Gaebler, Ruth Freeman Geissler, George Gibian, Anthony Hecht, Daniel Huws, Marvin Kane, Elinor Friedman Klein, Emmet J. Larkin, Ann Safford Mandel, Enid Epstein Mark, Dr Frederic B. Mayo, W.S. Merwin, Dr C. Perry Norton, Dr Richard A. Norton, Davenport Plumer III, Clarissa Roche, Marcia B. Stern, Stanley Sultan, and Constance L. Whalen.

A number of scholars contributed their insights and expertise as well. I would like to thank professors Lynda K. Bundtzen (Williams College), Frank H. Ellis (Smith College), Mary H. Laprade (Smith College), Richard Larschan (University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth), Sherry Marker (Smith College), Robin W. Peel (University of Plymouth), and Susan Van Dyne (Smith College).

My colleagues at Smith College contributed in so many ways to this publication. I would like to thank Susan Sanborn Barker and Barbara B. Blumenthal who carefully transcribed and proofed the original journals. I am indebted to the reference staff, particularly Robin Kinder, who answered the many general queries associated with this project. Specific information about alumnae and faculty at Smith College was gleaned from the college records by Mary Irwin and from the archives by Karen Eberhart and Nanci Young. I also appreciate the help of Sherrill Redmon and the entire staff of the Sophia Smith Collection, including Susan Boone, Maida Goodwin, Amy E. Hague, Margaret R. Jessup, Kathleen Banks Nutter, and Burd B. Schlessinger. Questions about specific disciplines were answered by librarians Rocco Piccinino, Jr (science), Barbara Polowy (art) and Marlene Wong (music). In addition, I would like to thank Christina M. Ryan and Naomi C. Sturtevant for their interlibrary loan services, college photographer Marlene Znoy, and student assistant Margaret S. Chilton.

Archivists, librarians, and curators at other institutions provided valuable information as well. I would particularly like to thank Dr Elisabeth Leedham-Green, deputy keeper at Cambridge University, Anne Thomson at Newnham College, and Philip Moss at Oxford University. Archivists at American universities who deserve special thanks include Brian A. Sullivan and David A. Ware at Harvard University; John S. Weeren at Princeton University; and Diane E. Kaplan, William R. Massa, Jr, Danelle Moon, and Christine Weideman at Yale University. Five-college colleagues who were especially helpful include Daria D'Arienzo (Amherst College), Patricia Albright (Mount Holyoke College), Linda Seidman and Ute Bargmann (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), I appreciate the generosity of Saundra Taylor, Rebecca Cape, and the entire staff of the Lilly Library at Indiana University during my visit to their Sylvia Plath Collection. Information was also kindly provided by Annie Armour (University of the South), Alison Brown (Northeastern University), Sylvia Kennick Brown (Williams College), Kim Ehritt (Middlebury College), Stephen Enniss (Emory University), Megan Flynn (Wellesley Free Library), Ronna Frick (Wellesley High School), Anna M. Grant (Bishop's University, Quebec), Gretchen Koerpel (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Kathy Kraft (Radcliffe College), Lesley M. Leduc (Yaddo), Martha Magane (Eastham Library), Leigh Montgomery (The Christian Science Monitor), Anne M. Ostendarp and Amber L. Ruggles (Dartmouth University), William Roberts (University of California, Berkeley), R.C. Rybnikar (Babson College), Susan Searcy (University of Nevada, Reno), Jay Satterfield (University of Chicago), T. Michael Womack (Library of Congress), and Mylinda S. Woodward (University of New Hampshire). In addition, I appreciate the contributions of Peter Brooks, Robert Meeropol, Philip H. Ryder, and Peter K. Steinberg.

Finally, I would like to thank my friend, Janet Snow Ritchie, for copyediting my notes, my husband, Bohdan Kukil, for helping me with his humor and wit to maintain a healthy perspective during this project, my acupuncturist, Dr Jonathan S. Klate, for keeping me healthy, and Dianne Hunter, my English professor at Trinity College, who first introduced me to the powerful words of Sylvia Plath.

Karen Valuckas Kukil
July 28, 1999

ALSO BY SYLVIA PLATH

Poetry
The Colossus and Other Poems
Ariel
Crossing the Water
Winter Trees
Collected Poems

Prose
The Bell Jar
Letters Home
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
The Journals of Sylvia Plath,
edited by Frances McCullough
and Ted Hughes

For Children
The Bed Book

APPENDIX 10

Journal 26 June 1956- 6 March 1961

Caf Franco-Oriental"
June 26 - Paris

14[b]

Miss Drake Proceeds to Supper

No novice
In those elaborate rituals
Which allay the malice
Of knotted table & crooked chair,
The new woman in the ward
Wears purple, steps carefully
Among her secret combinations of eggshells
And breakable humming-birds,
Footing it, sallow as a mouse,
Between each cabbage-rose
Slowly opening their furred petals
To devour and drag her down
Into the carpet's design.

With bird-quick eye cocked askew
She can see in the nick of time
How perilous needles grain the floorboards
And outwit their brambled plan;
Now through her ambushed air,
Adazzle with bright shards
Of broken glass,
She edges with wary breath,
Fending off jag and tooth,
Until, turning sideways,
She lifts one webbed foot after the other
Into the still, sultry weather"
Of the patient's dining room.

17[b]

June 27

Old black hunched woman with beautiful painted bluegreen eyes & elegant bones looking at herself in mirror after narrow mirror in storefronts.

[verso 17b]

Until bird-racketing dawn"
When her shrike-face
pecked open those locked lids,
to eat crown, palace, all
That all night had kept free her male.
And with her yellow beak