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The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill
Winner of the Popular Culture Association's Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited Book in Feminist Studies in Popular and American Culture.
The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill marks a significant development in literary recovery efforts related to Assia Wevill (1927-1969), who remains a critically important figure in the life and work of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath and the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. Editors Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg located over 150 texts authored by Assia Wevill and curated them into a collected scholarly edition of her letters, journals, poems, and other creative writings. These documents chronicle her personal and professional lives, her experiences as a single working mother in 1960s London, her domestic life with Hughes, and her celebrated translations of poetry by Yehuda Amichai. The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill offers an invaluable documentary resource for understanding a woman whose life continues to captivate readers and scholars.
The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill marks a significant development in literary recovery efforts related to Assia Wevill (1927-1969), who remains a critically important figure in the life and work of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath and the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. Editors Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg located over 150 texts authored by Assia Wevill and curated them into a collected scholarly edition of her letters, journals, poems, and other creative writings. These documents chronicle her personal and professional lives, her experiences as a single working mother in 1960s London, her domestic life with Hughes, and her celebrated translations of poetry by Yehuda Amichai. The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill offers an invaluable documentary resource for understanding a woman whose life continues to captivate readers and scholars.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published November 10, 2021
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About the author
Assia Wevill
1 book4 followersBooks about Assia Wevill:
Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love (2006)
by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev
Reclaiming Assia Wevill: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Literary Imagination (2019) by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick
Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love (2006)
by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev
Reclaiming Assia Wevill: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Literary Imagination (2019) by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick
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August 9, 2022TW: suicide, murder
As a collection of letters, journal entries, and poems this book is comprehensive and interesting, but I can't rate it without feeling like I'm rating Assia Wevill's life somehow. So I'll write this review instead.
I read an article about Wevill about 5 years ago and was fascinated. Her affair with Ted Hughes was clearly a factor in Sylvia Plath's suicide, yet because the circumstances of Plath's death haunted Hughes, he never committed to Wevill and she too killed herself (and her daughter) six years later in the same manner.
I'm oversimplifying it a lot - Hughes was probably abusive and he had a ton of affairs throughout his life, Hughes' parents hated Wevill, Plath and Wevill were both difficult people, and we know that Plath struggled with depression well before she met Hughes - but the circumstances of both women's deaths were tragic and intertwined.
Given all this, why did I decide to read this book, to spend time reading a letter Wevill wrote as a teenager to her first husband, or multiple journal entries about urinary tract infections, or a poem that she translated? Well, for decades so little was known about her that even when Hughes dedicated a book of poems to her, no critics knew who she was. Of course he had no obligation to speak publicly about extremely painful events in his personal life, but it feels like he tried to remove traces of her existence. We even know now that he had her cremated, scattered her ashes in an unmarked location, and later regretted it because gassing and cremation felt so uncomfortably reminiscent of the Nazi Germany that Wevill had fled as a child. She had wanted to be buried (but it's thought that he didn't know that).
Yes, Wevill did a terrible thing by killing her own daughter in addition to herself. She was also a very, very depressed woman who felt like she had no other choice, especially because Hughes wouldn't acknowledge to others that the child was his. To read her writing, from the mundanity of her everyday life to her success in copywriting and translation to the struggles of her deepest despair, is to recognize that she was complicated, she was human, she existed.
As a collection of letters, journal entries, and poems this book is comprehensive and interesting, but I can't rate it without feeling like I'm rating Assia Wevill's life somehow. So I'll write this review instead.
I read an article about Wevill about 5 years ago and was fascinated. Her affair with Ted Hughes was clearly a factor in Sylvia Plath's suicide, yet because the circumstances of Plath's death haunted Hughes, he never committed to Wevill and she too killed herself (and her daughter) six years later in the same manner.
I'm oversimplifying it a lot - Hughes was probably abusive and he had a ton of affairs throughout his life, Hughes' parents hated Wevill, Plath and Wevill were both difficult people, and we know that Plath struggled with depression well before she met Hughes - but the circumstances of both women's deaths were tragic and intertwined.
Given all this, why did I decide to read this book, to spend time reading a letter Wevill wrote as a teenager to her first husband, or multiple journal entries about urinary tract infections, or a poem that she translated? Well, for decades so little was known about her that even when Hughes dedicated a book of poems to her, no critics knew who she was. Of course he had no obligation to speak publicly about extremely painful events in his personal life, but it feels like he tried to remove traces of her existence. We even know now that he had her cremated, scattered her ashes in an unmarked location, and later regretted it because gassing and cremation felt so uncomfortably reminiscent of the Nazi Germany that Wevill had fled as a child. She had wanted to be buried (but it's thought that he didn't know that).
Yes, Wevill did a terrible thing by killing her own daughter in addition to herself. She was also a very, very depressed woman who felt like she had no other choice, especially because Hughes wouldn't acknowledge to others that the child was his. To read her writing, from the mundanity of her everyday life to her success in copywriting and translation to the struggles of her deepest despair, is to recognize that she was complicated, she was human, she existed.
December 25, 2021
She was so much more than the “Other” ,a book worth reading .
December 25, 2023
She was in her own right as a writer and I really enjoyed reading her work, also just made me realize how awful Ted Hughes was.
August 7, 2022
Assia Wevill was much more than the femme fatale implicated in the break up of Ted Hughes’ marriage to Sylvia Plath. She had her own artistic talents and wanted to be taken seriously but was mistreated by Ted Hughes when he started to tire of her, treating her like a servant and unfairly blaming her for the suicide of his first wife. Recent letters written by Plath show that Hughes was mentally and physically abusive towards Plath and the marriage was in trouble long before Wevill came on the scene and he was probably looking for an excuse to leave the marriage. Wevill was not therefore solely to blame for Plath’s suicide. Wevill was a career girl and a talented copy writer and translator and artist. Her advertising work included the famous Sea Witches hair dye film commercial which won rave reviews.
August 10, 2023
«To Nicholas Farrar Hughes, since he is too young for possessions, I will all my most tender love. To Frieda Rebecca Hughes, I will also my love and all the lace, ribbons and silks she can find, as well as a fine gold chain. To Ted Hughes, their father, I leave my no doubt welcome absence and my bitter contempt.» —
I can't do anything but recommend this book to get to know the figure of Assia Wevill, especially if you've read the works of Sylvia Plath. I didn't expect to like it as much as I have, nor did I think that what I would read could become painful, like the letters and diaries of Plath or Pizarnik. Wevill's writing is (for me) far from that of Plath —it's hard not to make a comparison—, especially her early letters, somewhat disordered and chaotic, but even so, Wevill manages to make her words resonate when she writes about her thoughts, emotions, and experiences.
I can't do anything but recommend this book to get to know the figure of Assia Wevill, especially if you've read the works of Sylvia Plath. I didn't expect to like it as much as I have, nor did I think that what I would read could become painful, like the letters and diaries of Plath or Pizarnik. Wevill's writing is (for me) far from that of Plath —it's hard not to make a comparison—, especially her early letters, somewhat disordered and chaotic, but even so, Wevill manages to make her words resonate when she writes about her thoughts, emotions, and experiences.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews