Revising Life

“A fine example of a new phase of Plath criticism made possible only recently when the poet’s papers became available to scholars in 1981. . . . Revising Life is a major contribution to Plath scholarship.” — New England Quarterly

“[A] book that is meticulously researched, clearly and gracefully written, carefully argued, and beautifully presented. . . . Revising Life is a major contribution to Plath scholarship.” — New England Quarterly

“Plath scholars will welcome intriguing accounts of the poet’s composition and revising processes, including the fact that she often composed on the reverse sides of her own and Ted Hughes’s manuscripts.” — American Literature [THIS QUOTE CARRIES MORE WEIGHT THAN THE ONE FROM WAGNER-MARTIN, PER KT]

“[An] important, provocative, and often brilliant book. . . . Plath emerges as a creator of a powerful new counter-discourse in literature and culture. Revising Life provides the most detailed study yet made of Plath’s poetry manuscripts. It yields fresh insights into the poet’s cultural situation and creative process, exposing some precise ways her poems interweave biography and textuality. Plath is revealed as being both specifically feminist and outrageously gifted.” — Steven Gould Axelrod, author of Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words

“Susan Van Dyne’s Revising Life brings the reader into [Plath’s] work with a new and complex intensity. This is criticism at its best, melding a quantity of factual information with Van Dyne’s superb readings. Her conclusions are sometimes surprising, but always helpful.” — Linda Wagner-Martin, author of Sylvia Plath: A Biography