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Showing posts from November, 2016

Book Review Fronts of Modernity: The 20th-Century Collections at the University of Victoria Libraries

Editor J. Matthew Huculak's Fronts of Modernity: The 20th-Century Collections at the University of Victoria Libraries (2016) is a remarkable work. He, along with the other contributors, survey the important archival collections held at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia. Published in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the special collections at the university, Fronts of Modernity is a treat for anyone interested in archives, modernism, poetry, literature, photography, art, and more. And if you have not heard of the collections at the University of Victoria, you are missing out. Fronts of Modernity was printed in limited run (1,000 copies), but is free to download as a PDF . In the book/document, readers are treated to a smorgasbord of archival topics, from collection policies to descriptions of unique manuscripts. Throughout, there is context provided in these cohesive "letters" so that you always know how the materials fit into the miss

Sylvia Plath's Wellesley Neighbor in The Bell Jar

One of the other things I learned on my tour of 26 Elmwood Road in August was that I got the house that inspired the description of Dodo Conway's wrong. This new information was alluded to in a post on McLean Hospital last month. I have long known that Dodo Conway was inspired by Sylvia Plath's Wellesley neighbor Betty Aldrich. The Aldrich family -- C. Duane and Betty and their nine children -- lived at 23 Elmwood Road which is across the street at a diagonal to the Plath house. The house I thought inspired Plath's description was a little further down the road. Today, the Aldrich house, like many in Wellesley and other affluent towns, appears to have been greatly improved from the way it looked in the 1950s. Of Dodo and the Conways, Plath wrote in The Bell Jar : Dodo Conway was a Catholic who had gone to Barnard and then married an architect who had gone to Columbia and was also a Catholic. They had a big, rambling house up the street from us, set behind a morbid faç

Sylvia Plath at the University of Victoria, British Columbia

As the seats in the room began to fill, the nerves left me almost immediately: like morning valley fog burning off when the sun reaches a certain point in the sky. I became instantly happy. Jonathan Bengston (University Librarian ), Lara Wilson (Director of Special Collections and University Archivist), and Christine Walde (Plath scholar, Awesome-sauce and Grants and Awards Librarian) welcomed the standing and sitting room only crowd to Room 210 in the Mearns Centre for Learning at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia. Their comments brought the assembled listeners up to speed with the context for the lecture/talk they were about to hear. 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the Special Collections at the university. The library holds some remarkable acquisitions including manuscripts and typescripts by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, as well as letters by Hughes. Indeed, some of the letters were written by Hughes with Plath in the room with him, giving present, sti