The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath

by Sylvia Plath, Peter K. Steinberg (Editor)

The Collected Prose stands alongside the Journals (2000) and the two volume Letters (2017 and 2018) to support a more complete understanding of Sylvia Plath's ambition and achievement as a writer. Expanding on the selection published as Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (1977), this volume draws together all of Sylvia Plath's shorter prose, much of which is previously uncollected and unpublished. The volume embraces her experiments with the short story and pieces of non-fiction from the 1940s through to her more polished compositions of the fifties and early sixties, including fragments of fiction as well as her journalism and book reviews. Themes and associations become apparent as the volume offers new, intertextual ways of reading across Plath's oeuvre, colouring and shading our understanding and appreciation of her extraordinary talent.

848 pages, Hardcover

Published September 12, 2024

About the author

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the most influential and emotionally powerful authors of the 20th century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she demonstrated literary talent from an early age, publishing her first poem at the age of eight. Her early life was shaped by the death of her father, Otto Plath, when she was eight years old, a trauma that would profoundly influence her later work.
Plath attended Smith College, where she excelled academically but also struggled privately with depression. In 1953, she survived a suicide attempt, an experience she later fictionalized in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. After recovering, she earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Newnham College, Cambridge, in England. While there, she met and married English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. Their relationship was passionate but tumultuous, with tensions exacerbated by personal differences and Hughes's infidelities.
Throughout her life, Plath sought to balance her ambitions as a writer with the demands of marriage and motherhood. She had two children with Hughes, Frieda and Nicholas, and continued to write prolifically. In 1960, her first poetry collection, The Colossus and Other Poems, was published in the United Kingdom. Although it received modest critical attention at the time, it laid the foundation for her distinctive voice—intensely personal, often exploring themes of death, rebirth, and female identity.
Plath's marriage unraveled in 1962, leading to a period of intense emotional turmoil but also extraordinary creative output. Living with her two children in London, she wrote many of the poems that would posthumously form Ariel, the collection that would cement her literary legacy. These works, filled with striking imagery and raw emotional force, displayed her ability to turn personal suffering into powerful art. Poems like "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" remain among her most famous, celebrated for their fierce honesty and technical brilliance.
In early 1963, following a deepening depression, Plath died by suicide at the age of 30. Her death shocked the literary world and sparked a lasting fascination with her life and work. The posthumous publication of Ariel in 1965, edited by Hughes, introduced Plath's later poetry to a wide audience and established her as a major figure in modern literature. Her novel The Bell Jar was also published under her own name shortly after her death, having initially appeared under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas."
Plath’s work is often classified within the genre of confessional poetry, a style that emphasizes personal and psychological experiences. Her fearless exploration of themes like mental illness, female oppression, and death has resonated with generations of readers and scholars. Over time, Plath has become a feminist icon, though her legacy is complex and occasionally controversial, especially in light of debates over Hughes's role in managing her literary estate and personal history.
Today, Sylvia Plath is remembered not only for her tragic personal story but also for her immense contributions to American and English literature. Her work continues to inspire writers, artists, and readers worldwide. Collections such as Ariel, Crossing the Water, and Winter Trees, as well as her journals and letters, offer deep insight into her creative mind. Sylvia Plath’s voice, marked by its intensity and emotional clarity, remains one of the most haunting and enduring in modern literature.

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd say this collection of all Plath's prose, published and not, is for scholars and Plath completists. It comprises the short stories which she was writing from a child; pieces from student magazines; later prose: interviews, opinion pieces, book reviews; and fragments from unfinished stories and novels that Plath started and abandoned.

The best stories are already published in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams which also has short extracts from the various notebooks and some of the unprinted stories from the Lilly manuscript.

The early stories are a testament to both how much Plath wrote from childhood and how normal a life she had: these are very much the writings of a conventional teenager growing up in a US suburb - she writes about school and friendships, about babysitting for neighbours, about first dates and playing tennis and drinking milkshakes in the ice-cream parlour. There are sometimes notes appended which show Plath trying to think about her craft: how to use voice, or symbols or allegory while admitting her own discontent at not pulling them off. Snippets of plays show her trying to hone dialogue and make voice an element of characterisation. My favourites were published in Seventeen magazine and remind me of the sort of stories I read as a teenager: 'And Summer Will Not Come Again' is a prime example of romantic teenage heartbreak which Plath writes with a simplicity that is tender and affecting.

It's also interesting to see short non-fiction pieces on fear of nuclear war - it's a salutary reminder of Plath's generation growing up in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (she was born in 1932) and why that imagery of fire and burning is so prevalent in her final collection, Ariel.

In comparison with the journals and letters, most of this prose shows the public side of Plath, who she wanted to be seen as, and effaces her more personal struggles and also her more sardonic side (though some of that is on display in a story about the trials of babysitting, for example). As such, the prose adds to our portrait of Plath, and it's certainly interesting to see how a character like Miss Minton came to her early on, in different ways from the final best-known story.

Inevitably, though, the early stories and non-fiction pieces that are likely to be new to readers (as opposed to the better-known later stories) tend to be simpler in all metrics than Plath's later work - the complexities of thought, imagery and syntax of, say, 'Johnny Panic' is rarely to be found here - not a criticism, just a comment on how Plath developed and honed her own craft through her short life. For readers who haven't read the stories before, this is a complete edition - if you already have the edition of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams that includes other prose, the best of Plath's mature stories are there.

[Ines]

this is SO preordered i cannot WAIT

[J.S. Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative, detailed and fascinating.