‘Sylvia Plath: A Very Short Introduction’ by Heather Clark

Having read ‘Letters Home’ and being both charmed and intrigued by it, I looked into reading a full biography of Syvia Plath. The most recent and most widely respected one is ‘Red Comet: The Short and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath’ by Heather Clark. Reading that, I soon discovered, while a delicious prospect, would be one hell of an undertaking as it is over 1000 pages long. Not so great for sitting up reading in bed either. I may one day give it a go, but for now I decided to start by reading this OUP very short introduction. It is also by Heather Clark and was published shortly after her vast biography in 2024, so it is up to date and also much more manageable at just 100 pages. Like all the excellent little books in this series, it provided me with a very satisfactory and authoritative summary of Sylvia Plath’s life and work, as well as the various controversies and her ever burgeoning posthumous reputation. I read it happily in a single evening.

I now know that ‘Letters Home’ was heavily edited to remove disobliging comments about people and that while it is a delight to read, there was a lot omitted. It thus gives anything but a full impression. For that I am going to have to read all the journals (so far I have been dipping in and out), and more importantly, all the surviving letters which are now available in two huge volumes without family censorship / editing.

I guess what I learned most from this little book concerns Sylvia Plath’s contribution to the development of modern poetry and the place that she and Ted Hughes have in the canon. Heather Clark argues that it is too simplistic to label her as ‘a confessional poet’. She drew deeply on her own life and thoughts as well as family background and political views when writing her poetry, but not always so directly, and aimed for much more besides:

Her poems were still full of myth, symbol and surrealism that distorted autobiographical elements; the self-reflection in these poems was that of a funhouse mirror. While she depicted emotions such as heartbreak, anger, despondency and love with direct precision – Plath’s speakers no longer look away – she divulged little, specific personal information.

The other really interesting observation concerns the amount of her writing that was destroyed either by her or by Ted Hughes after her death. This includes some letters and diaries, which were either one presumes too painful for the family to read or too potentially damaging to his reputation. Heather Clark speculates that in fact it may be the case that not everything thought to have been burned necessarily was, or that copies may have survived and may resurface one day – including the final volume of her journal and the last unfinished novel she wrote called ‘Double Exposure’.

The more I read, the more intrigued I get.