Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days


Book Description

On December 3rd 1926 crime writer Agatha Christie, 1890-1976, disappeared from her home in Berkshire, leaving her car abandoned off the road. She turned up 11 days later, claiming to be suffering from amnesia; based on true incident.




A Lover of Unreason


Book Description

'Assia was my true wife, and the best friend I ever had', wrote Ted Hughes, after his lover surrendered her life and that of their young daughter in 1969, six years after Sylvia Plath had suffered a similiar fate. Diva, she-devil, enchantress, muse, Lillith, Jezebel - Assia inspired many epithets during her life. The tragic story of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has always been related from one of two points of view: hers or his. Missing for over four decades had been a third: that of Hughes's mistress. This first biography of Assia Wevill views afresh the Plath-Hughes relationship and at the same time, recounts the journey that shaped her life. Wevill's is a complex story, formed as it is by the pull of often contrary forces.




Searching for Mercy Street


Book Description

New York Times Notable Book: A “beautifully written” memoir by the daughter of the brilliant, troubled poet (Detroit Free Press). This is an honest, unsparing account of the anguish and fierce love that bound a difficult mother and the daughter she left behind. Linda Sexton was twenty–one when her mother killed herself, and now she looks back, remembers, and tries to come to terms with her mother’s life. Growing up with Anne Sexton was a wild mixture of suicidal depression and manic happiness, inappropriate behavior and midnight trips to the psychiatric ward. Anne taught Linda how to write, how to see, how to imagine—and only Linda could have written a book that captures so vividly the intimate details and lingering emotions of their life together. Searching for Mercy Street speaks to everyone who admires Anne Sexton and to every daughter or son who knows the pain of an imperfect childhood. “Sexton forcefully communicates the fear, repulsion, neediness, and sorrow that filled her childhood, as well as the agony of her own mental breakdown and her terror of becoming like her mother, in lucid and vivid prose.” —The Boston Globe “A candid, often painful depiction of a daughter’s struggles to come to terms with her powerful and emotionally troubled mother.” —The New York Times




Breaking Down Plath


Book Description

A practical guide to Sylvia Plath’s works for middle and secondary school students One of the most dynamic and admired poets of the 20th century, Sylvia Plath wrote work about war, motherhood, jealousy, rage, grief, death, and mental illness that challenged preconceptions about what poetry should be about. The enduring power of Plath’s poetry and prose continues to attract and fascinate a multitude of readers. Best known for her poems "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" and the novel The Bell Jar, Plath starkly expressed a sense of alienation closely linked to both her personal experiences and the to the wider situation of women throughout mid-twentieth-century America. With an eye towards demythologizing Plath and focusing on her achievements, Breaking Down Plath aims to contextualize Plath’s work in the larger scheme of Cold War-era gender politics, debates about mental health, and anxiety about global conflict. Breaking Down Plath informs readers of essential facts about Sylvia Plath’s life and explores the works of the influential and controversial American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. Author Patricia Grisafi contextualizes and clarifies important underlying themes in Plath’s works while providing insight into how interest in Plath’s work developed, how the story of Plath’s life has been told, what we still need to discover about her, and why her life and art matter. Breaking Down Plath: Presents a critical biography of Plath’s life Offers a thematic tour through Plath's, short fiction, journals, and letters Explores the recurrent themes in Plath’s poetry Features an overview of the reception of Plath’s work Discusses the role of Plath in contemporary popular culture This book is a primer for younger or new Plath readers and a welcome addition to the toolbox used by educators, parents, and anyone interested in or studying Plath’s life and work.




These Ghostly Archives


Book Description

The authors discuss Sylvia Plath archival discoveries in unique ways, unearthing previously unknown materials and bringing new context to well-known worksNew essays on the sociological notion of ‘haunting’ in the archiveInnovative approaches to distance/international collaboration in archival scholarshipIntroduces new ways of understanding Sylvia PlathPlath’s The Bell Jar is to be released in 2018 as a major film starring Dakota Fanning and directed by Kirsten Dunst These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath offers a ground-breaking look at Plath studies. Focusing on previously unpublished material found in archives from around the world, These Ghostly Archives aims to reconstruct the ghostly figure of Plath within our culture via unseen letters, manuscripts, photographs, places and poems. This book approaches archival studies exploring both the practical and experiential work carried out in the archive, highlighting the ‘detective’-type work that it involves and the traces left behind from history. However, for the first time, this work also combines the sociological notion of ‘haunting’ - that is, the archive as a location where researchers haunt the research subject and in turn are haunted by the traces left behind. Never is material culture more powerful than when associated with the dead; never is the archive ghostlier when haunted by the absent presence of Plath. This book showcases the necessity to leave no archival box or folder left unopened, and how the researcher and the archive can change even though its documents might stay the same. Illustrations: 32 colour photographs




Pain, Parties, Work


Book Description

"I dreamed of New York, I am going there." On May 31, 1953, twenty-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at "the intellectual fashion magazine" Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next twenty-six days, the bright, blond New England collegian lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended Balanchine ballets, watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She typed rejection letters to writers from The New Yorker and ate an entire bowl of caviar at an advertising luncheon. She stalked Dylan Thomas and fought off an aggressive diamond-wielding delegate from the United Nations. She took hot baths, had her hair done, and discovered her signature drink (vodka, no ice). Young, beautiful, and on the cusp of an advantageous career, she was supposed to be having the time of her life. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fellow guest editors whose memories infuse these pages, Elizabeth Winder reveals how these twenty-six days indelibly altered how Plath saw herself, her mother, her friendships, and her romantic relationships, and how this period shaped her emerging identity as a woman and as a writer. Pain, Parties, Work—the three words Plath used to describe that time—shows how Manhattan's alien atmosphere unleashed an anxiety that would stay with her for the rest of her all-too-short life. Thoughtful and illuminating, this captivating portrait invites us to see Sylvia Plath before The Bell Jar, before she became an icon—a young woman with everything to live for.




Red Comet


Book Description

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art. “One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read." —Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant Sylvia Plath, who had precocious poetic ambition and was an accomplished published writer even before she became a star at Smith College. Refusing to read Plath’s work as if her every act was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark considers the sociopolitical context as she thoroughly explores Plath’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her troubles with an unenlightened mental health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes; and much more. Clark’s clear-eyed portraits of Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath’s suicide promote a deeper understanding of her final days. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark’s meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.




Anne Sexton


Book Description

Anne Sexton began writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to keep from killing herself. She held on to language for dear life and somehow -- in spite of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide -- managed to create a body of work that won a Pulitzer Prize and that still sings to thousands of readers. This exemplary biography, which was nominated for the National Book Award, provoked controversy for its revelations of infidelity and incest and its use of tapes from Sexton's psychiatric sessions. It reconciles the many Anne Sextons: the 1950s housewife; the abused child who became an abusive mother; the seductress; the suicide who carried "kill-me pills" in her handbag the way other women carry lipstick; and the poet who transmuted confession into lasting art.




The Music of Your Life


Book Description

With a voice that is both sophisticated and deeply Southern, author John Rowell evokes the memory of the great Truman Capote in this wonderful collection of short stories, peopled with unforgettable, endearing characters and filled with wry insights. Drawn from the emotional well of a young man who grew up in love with the glittery, glamorous world of music and movies and theater—far removed from his own more prosaic life in North Carolina—and informed with honesty and compassion, the seven short stories that comprise The Music of Your Life showcase the talent of a remarkably gifted writer. Compulsively readable and always accessible, each story takes the reader into the mind and heart of its central character, whether a young boy suffering from Lawrence Welk damage and teetering precariously on the edge of puberty ("The Music of Your Life") or a not-so-young-anymore man for whom fantasy and reality have become a terrifying blur and who finds himself slipping over the edge toward total meltdown ("Wildlife of Coastal Carolina"). Nostalgia plays a part in these stories as a somewhat jaded New York film critic looks back on his life and the movies that shaped him ("Spectators in Love"), and an aging flower-shop owner ruefully assesses the love he found and lost when, as an eighteen-year-old, he embarked on a Hollywood career that never soared but did include one particularly memorable appearance on the I Love Lucy television show ("Who Loves You?") These stories all create entire worlds within which the characters live and struggle to find their way. Funny, touching, serious, and tender, the tales within The Music of Your Life are sure to appeal to anyone who has ever known the awkwardness of being "different," and while life is often harsh for the stories' characters, the bold determination with which they persevere offers inspiration to all.




The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath


Book Description

An innovative and unique study exploring why many readers of Sylvia Plath become so attached to her as a cultural figure. By looking at first encounters with Plath's work through to pilgrimages that they make to places where Plath lived, this study explores why readers become so haunted by Plath.