Peter K. Steinberg's Books, Essays, & more

The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill Edited by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2021.

The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill is a scholarly volume presenting the primary work by Assia Wevill—letters, journals, poems, and miscellaneous texts—to the public for the first time. Assia Wevill, known for her relationships with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, emerges, through her own words, as an impressive creative voice and astute chronicler of her time. This book provides contextual information and the results of archival research to enable and activate multi-faceted and robust understandings of Assia Wevill as an accomplished translator and writer, talented artist, and complex person, whose influence and contributions made themselves known in her own day and whose legacy continues into our own.
The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume 2: 1956-1963 Edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil. London: Faber; New York: HarperCollins, 2018.

The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 2: As engaging as they are revealing, these remarkable letters cover the years from 1957 to 1963. They detail the last six tumultuous and prolific years of her life, covering her marriage to Ted Hughes, the births of her children Frieda and Nicholas, her early success, including the publication of the classic The Bell Jar, and her ongoing struggle with depression. The first compendium of its kind to include all of Plath’s letters from this period, The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 2 offers an intimate portrait of the writing life and mind of one of the most celebrated poets in literary history.
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The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume 1: 1940-1956 Edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil. London: Faber; New York: HarperCollins, 2017.

The Letters of Sylvia Plath includes her correspondence from her years at Smith, her summer editorial internship in New York City, her time at Cambridge, her experiences touring Europe, and the early days of her marriage to Ted Hughes in 1956. This remarkable, collected edition of Plath’s letters is a work of immense scholarship and care, presenting a comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote. Intimate and revealing, this masterful compilation offers fans and scholars generous and unprecedented insight into the life of one of our most significant poets.
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These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath by Gail Crowther and Peter K. Steinberg. Stroud, Eng.: Fonthill Media, 2017.

Focusing on previously unpublished material found in archives from all around the world, These Ghostly Archives aims to reconstruct the ghostly figure of Plath within our culture via unseen letters, manuscripts, photographs, places, and poems. This book approaches archival studies by exploring both the practical and experiential work carried out in the archive, highlighting the detective-type work that it involves and the traces left behind from history. However, for the first time, this book also combines the sociological notion of haunting - that is, the archive as a location where both the researchers haunt the research subject, and in turn are haunted by the traces left behind. This book showcases the necessity to leave no archival box or folder left unopened, and how the researcher and the archive can change, even though its documents might stay the same. 'These Ghostly Archives' offers a ground-breaking and unique look at Sylvia Plath studies.
Buy Now: (Amazon, Book Depository, Fonthill)
Sylvia Plath. Great Writers series. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004.

A short but comprehensive biography of Sylvia Plath written as way to introduce her life to younger readers. With an introduction by Linda Wagner-Martin. (Amazon)

Articles and Essays

  • "'They will come asking for our letters': Editing The Letters of Sylvia Plath". In The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath. 2022.
  • "Plath's scrapbooks". In Sylvia Plath in Context. 2019.
  • "'Sincerely yours': Plath and The New Yorker". In Sylvia Plath in Context. 2019.
  • "'A Fetish: Somehow': A Sylvia Plath Bookmark". Court Green 13. 2017.
  • "The Persistence of Plath". Fine Books & Collections. Autumn 2017.
  • "Letters". PN Review. May 2014.
  • "Biography of Sylvia Plath". Critical Insights: Sylvia Plath. 2013.
  • "The Current Critical Reception of Sylvia Plath". Critical Insights: Sylvia Plath. 2013.
  • "Chronology of Sylvia Plath's Life". Critical Insights: Sylvia Plath. 2013.
  • "These Ghostly Archives 5: Reanimating the Past". 2013. (co-written)
  • "These Ghostly Archives 4: Looking for New England". 2012. (co-written)
  • "Textual Variations in The Bell Jar Publications". 2012.
  • "Editor's Note". 2012.
  • "Proof of Plath". Fine Books & Collections. Spring 2011.
  • "A Perfectly Beautiful Time: Sylvia Plath at Camp Helen Storrow". 2011.
  • "These Ghostly Archives 3". 2011. (co-written)
  • "This is a Celebration: A Festschrift for The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath". 2010.
  • "'They Had to Call and Call'": The Search for Sylvia Plath". 2010.
  • "A Note About the Cover". 2010.
  • "These Ghostly Archives, Redux". 2010. (co-written)
  • "An Unacknowledged Publication by Sylvia Plath". Notes & Queries. September 2009. (co-written with Irralie Doel and Lena Friesen)
  • "These Ghostly Archives". 2009. (co-written)
  • "'I Should Be Loving This'": Sylvia Plath's 'The Perfect Place' and The Bell Jar". 2008.

  • Introductions

    Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year's Turning by Elizabeth Sigmund and Gail Crowther. Stroud, Eng.: Fonthill Media, 2014.

    Sylvia Plath in Devon is part memoir, part biography focusing on the fifteen months that Sylvia Plath lived in North Tawton, Devon from September 1961 to December 1962. This was an extraordinary time for Plath as she finished the proofs on her first novel The Bell Jar and in the autumn of 1962 produced most of her dazzling Ariel poems. Elizabeth Sigmund recalls the year of her friendship with Plath from their first meeting drinking tea to attending music concerts together. Gail Crowther considers the impact Plath's domestic life had on her creative work during this period drawing for the first time on unpublished letters, documents and previously unseen resources from a wide range of archives in the UK, US and Canada. What emerges is a unique and industrious picture of Plath as she settled into town life forging new friendships, giving birth to her second child, decorating her new home and producing some of the most memorable and powerful poetry of the 20th century.(Amazon)

    The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath. London: The British Library, 2010.

    Sylvia Plath is widely regarded as one of the most influential American authors of the twentieth century. Her frank, confessional style of writing, combined with her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes and her tragic suicide at age thirty have created an enduring literacy legacy and public fascination. This CD brings together BBC recordings from the British Library Sound Archive and features Plath reading many of her poems, such as "Leaving Early," "Candles," "Tulips," "The Surgeon at 2 a.m.," and "Berck-Plage". In addition, the disc presents Plath discussing poetic craft and her move to Britain, as well as a significantly revealing interview with Plath and Hughes, in which they talk about their famous marriage and what it means to live with your muse. Many of these recordings are available here for the first time, and together they will be a must-have for fans of Plath and twentieth-century poetry. Sadly out of print, but check Amazon, eBay, and ABE Books for copies.

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