Monday, December 27, 2010

[November 22] London: Sylvia Plath Sightseeing

Like my stack of Sylvia Plath-related books? I took a picture of them at home because I'm 'so proud' of them, ha ha. Oh, well there's a DVD in there too. Anyway, the purpose of showing this is that Sylvia Plath, although American, married an English poet and lived in England for parts of her life. I was really excited to see a couple of the houses that she lived in that are in London!


This is Queen Square next to the church that Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were married in:

The church that Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were married in:


I took the tube up to Camden and began my search for Fitzroy Road. I saw this lovely river along the way, and I had a fun time imagining Sylvia walking around the area, maybe pushing her small children in a stroller, going for walks in the nearby Regent's Park.

Ah-ha! I found it!

The house that Sylvia died in was also a house that Yeats lived in before. Sylvia was really excited that he had lived and created there, and that she would get to do the same. BUT, although Sylvia died there, there was no blue circle saying she had lived there! I have no idea why. There is all sorts of criteria for these blue circles on buildings throughout England, and as far and I and one of my English professors can tell, she fits the criteria just fine. Especially since she is 'well-known' for committing suicide, you'd think there would be a plaque especially on the Fitzroy Road house... but no... I'm still puzzled.




I knew that nearby, Plath had also lived in another house, but I hadn't written down the address so I decided to just walk around and by chance, after doing a double-take, I found the other house she lived in, this time with a plaque:

A pastel purple house among other cutely-colored pastel houses:



I was a bit surprised by how lovely the houses Plath lived in seemed to be. I've always been under the impression that although her and Hughes managed to get by financially, they were always worried about money and whatnot. But I would be pretty happy to live in one of these houses... especially by a park! That is one of my 'conditions' for living in London: It's got to be in a lovely house that looks out onto a park.

I imagine her small children played in Chalcot Square...

And as I left, I saw this old woman feeding birds. It was a bit scary to walk past because sometimes, the birds in London were a bit aggressive!

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