PUBLISHER'S NOTE
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n the years before his death, Ted Hughes was working towards the publicationof Sylvia Plath's unabridged Journals both in Britain and America. In 1997 hepassed the responsibility for the project to his children, Frieda and Nicholas, whohad already held the copyright for some time. To this end, he authorized theopening of the journals that he had previously sealed. Frieda and Nicholas entrusted the task of editing the book to Karen Kukil,Associate Curator of Rare Books at Smith College, Massachusetts. The projectcontinued under the guidance of Ted Hughes until his death in October 1998,and was completed in December 1999. These journals contain Sylvia Plath's opinions and not those of the publisher.Readers should keep in mind the colloquial meanings of words appropriate to thetime period of the journals. For example, Plath used the word ‘queer’ to denotean eccentric or suspicious person, according to her annotated dictionary, and nota homosexual. PREFACE Sylvia Plath speaks for herself in this unabridged edition of her journals. Shebegan keeping diaries and journals at the age of eleven and continued thispractice until her death at the age of thirty. It is her adult journals from 1950 to1962 that comprise this edition. The text is an exact transcription of twenty-threeoriginal manuscripts in the Sylvia Plath Collection at Smith College inNorthampton, Massachusetts. This collection of handwritten volumes and typedsheets documents Plath's student years at Smith College and Newnham College,Cambridge, her marriage to Ted Hughes, and two years of teaching and writingin New England. A few journal fragments from 1960 to 1962 complete theedition. In 1981 when Smith College acquired all the manuscripts remaining in thepossession of the Plath Estate in England, two of the journals in the archive weresealed by Ted Hughes until February 11, 2013. Plath's professional career as aninstructor of English at Smith College, followed by a year as a writer in Boston,and her private therapy sessions with Ruth Beuscher are the focus of the twosealed journals written between August 1957 and November 1959. Both journalswere unsealed by Ted Hughes shortly before his death in 1998 and are includedin this edition. The two bound journals that Plath wrote during the last three years of her lifeare not included in this publication. One of the journals 'disappeared’, accordingto Ted Hughes in his foreword to Frances McCullough's edition of The Journalsof Sylvia Plath (New York: Dial Press, 1982); it is still missing. The second‘maroon-backed ledger’, which contained entries to within three days of Plath'ssuicide, was destroyed by Hughes. The goal of this new edition of Sylvia Plath's journals is to present a completeand historically accurate text. The transcription of the manuscripts at SmithCollege is as faithful to the author's originals as possible. Plath's final revisionsare preserved and her substantive deletions and corrections are discussed in thenotes. Plath's spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar, as well as hererrors, have been carefully transcribed and are presented without editorialcomment. Every nuance of the physical journals has been preserved, includingPlath's practice of underlining certain words and passages in her journals.Original layout and page breaks, however, are not duplicated. Detailed descriptions of the physical features of the journals are contained in the notes. The text is complete, except for a few names that have been shortened toinitials and dashes to protect the privacy of living individuals. In two places, sixsentences have been omitted (for a total of twelve omitted sentences). Ellipsesthat appear in the text were made by Sylvia Plath. Eight main journals, written between 1950 and 1959, comprise the centralnarrative of this edition and are arranged separately in chronological order.Fifteen journal fragments and notebooks, written between 1951 and 1962, arearranged chronologically as appendices. Since a few journals and notebookswere kept simultaneously, there is some overlap. General biographicalinformation is presented on the appropriate half-title for each of the eightprincipal journals. A few editorial notes, contained within square brackets andclearly marked 'ed.', direct the reader to relevant journal fragments in theappendices. These are the only extraneous notes that appear within the journals.Every effort has been made in this edition to give the reader direct access toSylvia Plath's actual words without interruption or interpretation. Factual notes have been provided at the end of the journals and appendices inorder to preserve the flow of the text. Significant places, family, friends, andprofessional contacts are identified at their first mention. Annotations, textualvariants, and specific physical characteristics of the journals are described,particularly when this information affects the meaning of the text. Marginaliasuch as exclamation points and tick marks are not recorded. The presence of anote is indicated by a superscript n after the term to be identified or described.Notes for each separate journal and appendix are keyed to appropriate pagenumbers. References to additional manuscript at Smith College and at otherinstitutions are included in the notes when appropriate.
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