I love Sylvia Plath and any new interpretation of her work is an automatic read for me.
I found this take on Plath,'s work absolutely fascinating.
Read through a feminist lens, this book examines, amongst other things, the violence and abuse woven into Plath's poetry.
There is an exploration of previous Plath studies and the gaps that arise from Ted Hughes's control of Plath's estate. The seemingly careless way that her work was treated by the Hughes family is appalling. But also encourages further speculation as archiving paper was so important to both Plath and Hughes.
I found this an interesting and thought-provoking read.

A very fine piece of feminist writing. Van Duyne looks at Hughes’ treatment of Plath in life and death and how this has affected how we see Plath and view her work today. Van Duyne makes space for the missing pieces of Plath’s puzzle, particularly pertaining to her relationship and its effects on her life and work, and resurrects her as the intelligent, talented, and hard-working woman she was. A must for Plath fans and scholars.

Thanks to @netgalley and W. W. Norton for allowing me to read this advanced copy in exchange for my thoughts.

Loving Sylvia Plath takes a scholarly look at Plath's life and works, as well as the way that the public and scholars have responded to her fame over time, often dismissing her work or fans of her work for being hysterical. It also discusses the ways in which Plath has been rewritten or silenced over time, whether that be her works intentionally being hidden or being revised in ways that she obviously did not intend for them to be published. The book looks at Plath, but it also discusses some of the most important relationships during her life, as well as the scholars and biographers who studied her after her death.

The commentary on the ways in which people have reacted to Plath's work and criticism of Ted Hughes was quite interesting. There were also some sections that related her poems back to her life, which I found enjoyable. Some of the later chapters I found a bit repetitive, which made the book feel a bit disorganized and I wasn't entirely certain what the themes of some of the chapters were supposed to be. At times it felt like the author was trying to take an intersectional lens to connect the problems with the public's perspective on Plath to larger societal issues, but it never really got to the larger point. There were also some connections that the author shared with Plath in their personal lives that I wish had been expanded on a bit more. More discussion of the early biographers who had tried to write about Plath would have been interesting as well. Overall, this is a decent overview of the scholarly work that has been produced on Sylvia Plath, and it has some good discussion about the way that women are treated as writers and scholars impacting the ways in which Plath and the people who write about her are looked down upon. This will certainly be of interest to those who want to learn more about Sylvia Plath's personal life and relationships.

This is a brilliant book that discusses the way Hughes and the literary circle of the period shaped Plath's legacy as "tragic poet suicide" and glossed over the significant abuse in the relationship.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
Loved this book. Well written and researched. I’ve always loved everything involving Sylvia Plath and this was great.

Admittedly I am writing this before finishing the book, but that is simply because I am savouring this incredibly well-researched biography of Plath. Having first experienced Plath’s work in high school, this is the first proper biography I’m delving into and while I knew of some of the more sour parts of her life, I didn’t know quite how awful things were.

As with many good memoirs this book has created many different emotions during my reading, anger at Hughes as well as the other men who have commented on and edited Plath’s work as well as sorrow at the pain she experienced. Van Duyne has produced an incredible biography of a woman who’s story is all too often sweetened to make it more palatable and I would heartily recommend this to anyone interested in not only Plath’s work but the experiences of creative women during the 20th century.

I’ve been a huge fan of Sylvia Plath’s poetry and The Bell Jar since I was in high school. When I saw this was coming out, I knew I had to read it! This reclamation/biography explores a lot in Plath’s life and legacy-before and after her tragic suicide, and her relationship with poet Ted Hughes. It also explored some of the lives adjacent to her own, some hidden away in history that I hadn’t even heard of before reading this.
I loved learning more about this woman whose work I’ve appreciated for years, but I will admit-there were some parts that just felt very long, especially when discussing a topic outside of Plath’s life (ex. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and the Netflix adaptation) and I felt some of those could’ve been shorter since it did feel like it was taking a long time to get through it (but that’s my own personal experience! Take with a grain of salt).
Well-researched, this is a must for anyone who appreciates Plath’s work but wants to know more beyond her writing.
Thank you to W.W. Norton & Company for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Sylvia Plath, and her fans, have long been symbols of female hysteria: overwrought, depressed, and obsessed with death. And while Heather Clark’s definitive 2020 biography Red Comet did much to dispel that myth and give a fuller picture of Sylvia Plath’s life, that old stereotype still lingers. Emily Van Duyne’s new book interrogates that stereotype while contending that Sylvia was a victim of intimate partner violence, and her legacy and reputation were heavily edited by Ted Hughes. This book is both an academic look and a personal reflection on Van Duyne’s feelings about Sylvia Plath. She focuses especially closely on Sylvia’s poem’s about marriage, and discusses the difficulties that many biographers and scholars faced when attempting to get a full picture of the famous poet after her death.

Does the world need yet another book about Sylvia Plath? As a huge Plath fan, I would say yes! After reading Red Comet I did not think there would be much left to say, but it was interesting how Van Duyne focused on a specific area of Plath’s life (and death) - the intimate partner violence she suffered at the hands of Ted Hughes. While there is not necessarily anything new here in the way of information, the way that Van Duyne works with the same material everyone else has does feel new - she uses it to shine a light on one specific area and then discusses how that has impacted Plath’s legacy. I would not necessarily recommend this to readers who are new to Plath or who want a full biography, but I would certainly recommend it to Plath fans.

As an admirer of Sylvia Plath's work, I couldn't wait to read this book. Van Duyne provides an insightful and critical examination of Sylvia Plath's life, challenging the traditional narrative that her genius and poetry led to her suicide. Instead she highlights the violence and emotional abuse she endured in her marriage with Ted Hughes and her struggles with mental illness. A must read for fans of Plath;s work.

Sadly not for me, I am so interested in Sylvia Plath and her life but this was written in such a dull manner I kept falling asleep

This was such great insight to the life and nuances of Sylvia Plath. As somebody who has read her work, this really called to me, especially because Plath died tragically before she could defend any of her work herself. Much of her work has undertones that I do not agree with, but were normal for her time. It is unfortunate that we never got to see how her opinions and writing may have changed with the time.

If it’s possible to love a book that enraged you, put this one on the list. Emily Van Duyne’s blend of biography, literary history, and criticism is an effective tool for bringing out the righteous anger one should feel when they realize just how poorly Sylvia Plath (and her counterpart, Assia Wevill) has been treated, both throughout her own life and ever since her death. From a terrible husband to gossiping, backstabbing poets and biographers, she has faced it all well into her afterlife. Van Duyne is very good at boiling down years of controversy and pain to the salient points one needs to understand Plath’s history. Perhaps this is because of her love of her subject, or perhaps it’s because she’s a top-notch critic, but it’s probably a combination of both, and I thank her for her work.

What a fantastic book. I first discovered Sylvia Plath when I was in school and fell in love with her writing, she is a woman who put my own raw thoughts and feelings into writing when I couldn't and felt alone. But I always felt that people who wrote about her or conveyed/studied her work did it in a way that completely diminished the domestic abuse she clearly suffered from and her mental illness.

I really liked the way the author, so bravely, shared her own story and connected it with Plath's. She showed how a powerful man has told the story of this woman to suit him and how scholars continue to brush his behaviour under the rug and turn it around on Plath. This book really centers Plath as the victim and urges us to believe her, to not discredit her.

I was drawn to this book's combination of academic criticism, reporting and personal narrative, all woven expertly together. It is a very important addition to the world of Sylvia Plath scholarship, especially for the way in which it utilizes new archival materials. A captivating read!

As a poet, I've appreciated Plath's work for some time, and can't resist a well-written Plath book so I was desperate to read "Loving Sylvia Plath." This is a thoughtful, well researched work which includes the author's own bias as an admitted DV survivor. It is engaging and fresh, a great addition toPlath Scholarshp. Highly recommended for writers and loves of Plath. Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for the ARC.
#lovingsylviaplath

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of Loving Sylvia Plath by Emily Van Duyne.

I went into this book not knowing if I was going to like it, as I don't read a lot of nonfiction. However, I was/am a lover of Plath and was very interested in Van Duyne's reclamation of her story. I was captivated by this book. Really well-written, astounding points about how Plath's life was shaped by Ted Hughes and other critics that were Hughes' friends. Sylvia's story is told as if it was inevitable that she commit suicide, it was her genius and poetry that killed her, but the violence she suffered in her marriage along with mental illness has all but been pushed aside, or questioned. I enjoyed the interwoven stories from the author's own life and the connection of Sylvia's problems with that of powerful men in modern culture. A tale as old as time. Fantastic work.

As a Plath superfan since adolescence, I was drawn to this book and am so grateful to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for the opportunity to get an early peek at it.

I have read many of the biographies cited in this book, and found it to be a compelling addition to the Plath catalog. My concern was that it might offer a simple rehashing of what has already been written. However, it is ultimately (and most importantly) a critical examination of the scholarship done thus far, particularly regarding the choices various biographers have made when it comes to the intimate partner violence between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. IPV is the filter through which Van Duyne examines Sylvia's life, work, and death. It was fascinating to see how scholars have protected the myth of Hughes at Plath's expense. The distillation of Plath's life to her tragic demise has always bothered me, and this book goes a long way in taking a more holistic look at her life and work as well as the culpability that not only Hughes but his apologists bear.

I received this as a digital galley from NetGalley.

One of the things I loved about this new work of scholarship about Sylvia Plath was the reconsideration of previous scholarship (good & bad).

Also fuck Ted Hughes.

A feminist reimagining of Sylvia Plath's final years leading up to her suicide. What did she suffer to end up this way? What toll did her life take? Fans of Sylvia Plath will want to read this tale to get to know Sylvia's last years and to try to understand the oft slandered "literary sad Gil" from a new perspective.

As someone who reads everything going on Plath, l appreciated this new perspective. A thoughtful, reflective work that also veers into the author’s own life and is unashamed in its passion for its subject.
My only reservation is that while the author thoroughly pursues the IDV angle, there is no attempt to engage with the possibility of BDSM in the marriage, which l would have thought necessary, if only to dismiss.