peter k. steinberg

These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath offers a ground-breaking look at Plath studies. Focusing on previously unpublished material found in archives from around the world, These Ghostly Archives aims to reconstruct the ghostly figure of Plath within our culture via unseen letters, manuscripts, photographs, places and poems. This book approaches archival studies exploring both the practical and experiential work carried out in the archive, highlighting the ‘detective’-type work that it involves and the traces left behind from history.

However, for the first time, this work also combines the sociological notion of ‘haunting’ - that is, the archive as a location where researchers haunt the research subject and in turn are haunted by the traces left behind. Never is material culture more powerful than when associated with the dead; never is the archive ghostlier when haunted by the absent presence of Plath.

This book showcases the necessity to leave no archival box or folder left unopened, and how the researcher and the archive can change even though its documents might stay the same.