Plath and Woolf Items on Display in Dobkin Feminist History Exhibition

“No gate, no lock, 
no bolt”: The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminist History exhibition at the Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in Manhattan contains several items related to Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. The Plath items include typescripts of her poems "To Eva Descending a Stair: A Villanelle," "Verbal Calisthenics," "Go Get the Goodly Squab," and "Doomsday" and a letter to Ramona Maher of Texas Christian University thanking her for favorably reviewing Plath's poem "Carnival Nocturne." All of these items were sent or prepared while Plath was living in Lawrence House at Smith College in 1954. Plath mentioned near the close of her letter to Maher that she is a "devotee of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence." Plath had read Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse two years earlier in her twentieth century literature course at Smith. The Woolf items on display include a poem by Vita Sackville-West and the logbook from the Godrevy Lighthouse in Cornwall, which includes the names of Virginia, Thoby, Adrian, and Leslie Stephen from their visit in 1894.

The exhibit closes on Saturday October 24, 2015.