ABSTRACT
The publication of Sylvia Plath's journals has inevitably been caught up in the politics surrounding the interpretation of Plath as a writer and as an icon. As the critic Jacqueline Rose has written, "Execrated and idolised, Sylvia Plath hovers between the furthest poles of positive and negative appraisal." This chapter looks at Plath's journals not so much as one more contested "representation" of Plath, but in terms of Plath's experiments with different diary forms and with the different possible effects she was able to achieve working in the diary genre. Plath started keeping a diary as a schoolgirl, when her mother used to give her a diary every year for Christmas. These were dated diaries, and the formal demands must have suited Plath at first, for she filled in each page to the allotted space, often finishing an entry with tiny writing to fit it all in under the right date.
