The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962

"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

View other editions of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962.
View books by Sylvia Plath.

A BEST FRIEND FOR YOUR BOOKSHELF - Rated
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.

If you weren't a fan before, you will be! - Rated
Not knowing much about Plath, I read 'The Bell Jar' before finding this book. As a great reader of people's journals I thought it would give me a closer look at one of the most famous writers, well, ever. In so many places it could have been me talking, and in so many more I wish it was. As her private journals for her eyes only, they show how Plath's expression of the world around her could be re-created on the page, showing the same care and precision that was used in her novel and poetry. How many other people's diaries are as expressive as this?
A great read for anyone interested in Plath or Hughes, or anyone just interested in reading the private thoughts of a great writer!

A deep insight into a tortured woman - Rated
I started to read "The Journals of Sylvia Plath" with an air of scepticism, due to the fact that I am quite sceptic of anybody's "journals" or "diaries" but I was immersed in the life of Sylvia Plath and felt for her when she was depressed, rejoiced with her when she was exultant and cried with her when she was upset.
I found this book amazing because you never really know the pain someone is going through, especially people such as poets.
She analyses everything about herself with a feeling of anger against the stereotypical role she was meant to play at that time, the 1950s and 1960s and I found her extremely inspirational. I am 16 and yet, I can relate to some of the things she writes about; aspirations, joys, depression and despair.
She was a poetic genius, for example her poem "Daddy", but despite all of this, this sexy vivacious woman felt that she wanted to take her own life and I think that her jounals give an insight as to why she felt she had to do it.

Essential reading for all who appreciate Plath's work - Rated
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.

Incomplete Journals of a monomaniac. - Rated
I wish I could have given this book 5 stars, the content is riveting, but I decided to give it four because of the editing by Karen V. Kukil.

The Journals of Sylvia Plath as we all know are incomplete, they were edited (sanitized) by her husband Ted Hughes. No doubt whatsoever that the material he 'lost' was detrimental to him. The only thing he allows in the book is her account of his dalliance with a student, after which she begins to see him in a different light. It leaves you at the end of the book feeling very sorry for this woman, and wanting to find out more. (Which one can't help feeling was a marketing ploy by Hughes, who sold the rights to her book the Bell Jar to the Americans after her death in spite of her mother's objections, so that he could raise the money to buy a third home).

Sylvia Plath was brilliant, sexy, vivacious and sociable. She was also completely obsessed with analyzing the working of her mind, her emotions and sensitivities. She was narcissistic, selfish and critical to the point of meanness. The rawness of her emotions is hard to take sometimes. What a normal person would consider to be a rough sea of life and cope accordingly, she turns into a force 10 hurricane. One cannot help feeling that the journals were written to be published, that the author KNEW someday they would be discovered and read by everyone. The writing is beautiful. The very first entry July 1950 is a delight:-

"I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream......"

Once started, it is hard to put the book down.

A word now about the editing. I think the book could have been better organized for the general reader, it is formatted like a text book. All the cross-referencing! I had to use two bookmarks all the way through the reading of the book. The 'Notes' could have been at the bottom of each page instead of hidden at the back of the book. The Appendices could have been Notes at the end of each appertaining journal section, and the Index could have been better arranged. The section on Sylvia Plath (which takes up 5 1/2 pages of the index) should have been separated from the rest, to make it less confusing.