University Communications
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: Nov. 19, 1999
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Assistant Director, 404-727-0644, or dhammac@emory.edu

Found! Hand-written Notes From Unfinished Sylvia Plath Novel, "Falcon Yard"

The Ted Hughes collection, acquired by Emory in 1997, is bearing fruit. As recently reported in the "Literary Collections News" publication from the Woodruff Library: "Olivia Cole, a student from England who is currently helping process the Ted Hughes Papers made a remarkable discovery on her second day of work in the archive. While going through drafts of previously unpublished Hughes poems, she found on the opposite side of the pages, detailed notes in Sylvia Plath's hand for "Falcon Yard," the previously lost novel that Sylvia began in the late 1950s but is thought to have (been) destroyed. The notes describe the novel as 'a fable of faithfulness' and include the names of a number of friends and family who served as the real-life models for the fictional characters. According to Sylvia Plath's biographer Anne Stevenson, 'There is absolutely no documentary evidence that such a novel existed,' that is, until now."

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