Tracy Brain lectures in English and Creative Writing at Bath Spa University College.

• 1. THE OUTLINE OF THE WORLD BECOMES CLEAR Packaging Sylvia Plath Where is Sylvia Plath? The Plath Archives Dearly Beloved 2. STRADDLING THE ATLANTIC Your Puddle-Jumping Daughter Plath our Compatriot Where are We? Alienation and Belonging in the Bee Poems The Foreigner Within 3. PLATH'S ENVIRONMENTALISM Background Prose Circulating Venom The Complications of Masculinity Do You Do No Harm? 4. THE ORIGINS OF THE BELL JAR Bronte, Woolf and Plath A Comparison The Legacy Woolf and The Bell Jar Rethinking Buddy Willard The Misunderstood Mother and The Bell Jar Manuscripts Sylvia Plath's Villette 5. A WAY OF GETTING THE POEMS The Critics on Hughes and Plath Hughes's story The reciprocity of Influence between Plath and Hughes The Question of the Confessional Before Birthday Letters Textual Relationships and Poetic Conversations Bleeding Through the Page The Future

"a valuable, important book...painstaking and lucid" 'I would certainly want to use it as a textbook.' 'I wolfed it down in one rapid reading, which will be followed by numerous intensive close re-readings. It is bound to be immensely helpful...' 'I am grateful for the authoritative information about manuscript evidence.' ' ...what prompted this letter, aside from the surge of admiration your book produced in me...' ' ...a valuable, important book--so painstaking and lucid about issues fundamental to critical evaluation of these poets.'' ['poets' here refers to Plath and Hughes] 'My thanks for all your hard work, and my gratitude for your critical acumen.' Diane Ward Middlebrook, Professor of English, Standford University.