pouring out of the phone like mud: “Words heard, by accident, over the phone,” dated 9/9/62, CP.

“The blood jet is poetry”: “Kindness,” CP.

“little man”: To Gerry Becker, one of the last people to see SP alive, she confided that she and Ted made love “like giants.” See Jillian Becker’s memoir, Giving Up.

“He says”: SP’s letter to Mrs. Prouty, 29/9/62: Lilly. The letter to AP, dated 26/9/62, was published in AP’s edition of Letters Home, but TH insisted that AP excise the portion of the letter quoted here. Previous biographers have treated SP’s versions of what TH said to her warily, but much of what she writes about his manner, behavior, and even the wording of his comments is replicated in Assia Wevill’s accounts of his treatment of her. See Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev.

an excursion to Ireland: Accounts of the Irish episode vary widely—and rightly so, since SP’s views of TH were in flux, and Richard Murphy’s version, included in Stevenson, reads like a soap opera. SP’s letters to Murphy are in ECS.

“A story”: This and subsequent quotations are taken from journal entries Plath wrote when she was eighteen. Nothing changed in her later years concerning her views of eternity, suicide, and writing. SP often mistakenly confused it’s and its.

“scare you off”: the exchanges between OH and Alvarez are at the BL.

“It has always seemed to me”: Peter Porter, “Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath: A Bystander’s Recollections,” Australian Book Review, August 2001: http://www.australianbookreview.com.au/past-issues/online-archive/153.

“She is the phoenix”: BL.

On destiny’s doorstep: the details about SP’s discovery of the Fitzroy Road flat are from her letter to Olive Higgins Prouty 20/11/62, Smith.

Emily Hahn: I experienced Hahn’s generosity and high spirits when I interviewed her for my biography of Rebecca West. She took an immediate interest in my work and helped to arrange interviews with others. Lessing was also helpful to me, but, like SP, I encountered a temperament much cooler than Hahn’s.

By 2 January: The details in this paragraph are drawn from SP’s essay, “Snow Blitz,” in JP.

“If she felt any qualms”: Alexander, Ariel Ascending, prints the fullest version of TH’s introduction to SP’s journals.

SP’s last wracking weekend: My account corrects earlier biographies. Becker has expressed dissatisfaction with previous biographers’ accounts, saying they “suppressed” her information “or distorted it, not only with inaccuracies but also by tailoring it to make a point.”

Dr. Horder: see http://www.camdennewjournal.com/feature-literature-could-i-have-done-more-sylvia-plath-poets-doctor-john-horder-his-role-her-final-d.

our mothers: I vividly recall speaking with Becker about her mother, who was also a writer, while researching my biography of Rebecca West. Jillian had very hard feelings about a demanding parent that would have helped form the bond with SP.

“all one’s energy”: Alvarez, The Savage God.

thrust her head as far as she could: Jillian Becker learned this detail from a police officer attached to the London coroner’s office.

In “The Descent of Ariel: The Death of Sylvia Plath,” a manuscript deposited in both the British Library and the University of Maryland, Elizabeth Hinchliffe concludes that Plath did not put her head in the oven until perhaps 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. Plath had asked Trevor Thomas the night before her death what time he would leave for work; 8:30, as usual, was his reply. Plath, Hinchliffe surmises, expected Thomas to smell the gas before he departed for work and come to the rescue. Sylvia did not anticipate that her pacing back and forth would keep Thomas up much of the night, or that he would take a sleeping pill, which then combined with the gas seeping into his apartment. Thus knocked out, Thomas could not save her. The reconstruction of Plath’s last hours hinges, however, on knowing exactly when Plath turned on the gas. Dr. Horder believed that Sylvia had gassed herself at about 4:00 a.m., and he told Stevenson that even if Plath had been found alive, her mind would have been destroyed.

Chapter 8: AP’s correspondence with Frances McCullough is at Maryland.

“she had free and controlled access”: quoted in Clark.

“that hate”: SP’s marks, annotations, and underlining in her books are at Smith, as are the two letters from Dido Merwin to Linda Wagner-Martin, and correspondence to and from AP. My account of Edward Butscher’s research is drawn from EBP, which includes the letters from Olwyn Hughes. The letters to Anne Stevenson from OH and Peter Davison are also at Smith, as are Stevenson’s letters to Davison and OH.

“Please don’t”: BL.

“reincarnated Cleopatra”: to OH, BL.

“very nice”: BL.

it “became increasingly difficult”: Holder.

“Notes Toward a Biography”: reprinted in Newman.

“I am so sick”: Smith.

“Plath or her publisher”: email from Frances McCullough to Beth Alvarez, 8/2/12, forwarded to me.

“Ted told me”: Maryland.

“Miss Rosenstein seems”: ECS.

Poor Clare Court: interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund.

“so insensitive that”: quoted in Malcolm.

“English authors”: SPWW.

“If you wrote”: Elizabeth Compton to EB, 24/1/74.

Butscher’s request for an interview: “In Search of Sylvia,” SPWW.

“For me”: Smith.

“Olwyn, of course”: Emory.

the “mob”: THL does not include the entire correspondence between AP, TH, and Frances McCullough, but it is available at Emory and at Maryland, College Park.

Reviews of Letters Home: SPCH.

“You reify”: 4/2/75, EBP.

“If it was just”: 11/2/75, EBP.

“There was a very real chance”: 30/4/91, Maryland.

“the effect of”: Emory.

“no mention of Assia”: ECS.

“a Soviet view of history”: interview with A. Alvarez.

“rampant” feminism: Emory.

“spilling the beans”: TH to Victor Kovner, the attorney defending him in the Jane Anderson lawsuit, Emory.

“central figure”: Emory.

“I have had the work in question”: Emory.

“hot copy”: BL.

“bad as well as the good”: 26/8/92, BL.

Eschewing much biographical speculation: Emory.

“It’s so deterministic”: Emory.

“excessively vituperative”: Bayley.

“Sylvia suicide doll”: Frieda’s comments are quoted in Jamie Wilson, “Frieda Hughes Attacks BBC for Film on Plath,” Guardian, 3/2/03.

In “Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath’s Son, Commits Suicide,” Huffington Post, 23/3/09, Frieda is quoted as saying her brother had been depressed.

“wildly inaccurate”: ECS.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, Paul. Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath. Viking-Penguin, 1991. Kindle edition, new introduction, 2003.

______, ed. Ariel Ascending: Writings about Sylvia Plath. Harper & Row, 1985.

Alliston, Susan. Poems and Journals, 1960–1969. Richard Hollis, 2010.

Alvarez, A. The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. Random House, 1972.

______. When Did It All Go Right? William Morrow, 2000.

Axelrod, Steven Gould. Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Badia, Janet. Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers. University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.

Bayley, Sally, and Tracy Brain, eds. Representing Sylvia Plath. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Becker, Jillian. Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. St. Martin’s Press, 2003.

Brain, Tracy. The Other Sylvia Plath. Longman, 2001.

Butscher, Edward. Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness. Seabury, 1976. Kindle edition, 2003.

______, ed. Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work. Dodd, Mead, 1977.

Clark, Heather. The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Oxford University Press, 2011.