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Research
Because Wintering is a historical novel in the sense that it depicts real people in a known moment of time, and in this case literary figures whose lives have been scrutinized by biographers, critics and devotees for every potential eyelash of detail, my research was extensive and ongoing throughout the two and a half years of writing the novel.
I relied on literally dozens of published works on Plath and Ted Hughes -- biographies and critical studies -- as well as on all of Plath's and Hughes' published works of poetry and fiction, Hughes' critical essays, and Plath's unabridged journals. In addition, I did intensive research with the unpublished archives at Smith College, Indiana University's Lilly Library, and the British Library, which included transcribing literally hundreds of pages of correspondence, manuscript drafts, biographical notes, transcripts of interviews and broadcasts, even Plath's baby book and her daily calendar for 1962. I studied the annotated books from Plath's personal library, collected at Smith and at Indiana University, and did further research in the current events of 1962 that would have affected Plath's life. I also studied each of the forty-one Ariel poems in detail, focusing on the dates of their creation, changes from draft to final version, their unique metaphors, and Plath's particular placement of each poem within the narrative context of her manuscript. From all of this factual -- though often conflicting -- material, I created a voluminous chronology of information with which to inform the writing of each chapter.
In addition to travel to Indiana University and to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where Plath was both a college student and on the faculty, I spent several weeks in England walking the streets and countryside where Plath had lived in London and in Devonshire, and where as a young wife and mother she visited Hughes' family in Yorkshire, now her burial place.
Continuing research remained a part of the writing process itself. Starting with the poem for which each chapter is named, I did a close reading, followed by study of all of the factual particulars relevant to that poem. This process often took up to a week, during which I was making notes and following imaginative "threads." Then, coincidentally following a practice similar to the one that Plath undertook while writing, with the guidance of her husband, I let all of the material steep for a day before beginning to write. Each chapter was finalized before moving to the next.
Though some factual details of my research have been shifted toward fiction for narrative simplicity's sake or to honor the copyright entitlement of the Plath estate, Wintering also incorporates a sizable amount of my original scholarship, most significantly related to the creation of several of Plath's late poems, including the famous "Ariel" and "Elm."
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Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath
About Wintering
