Lives Revised - by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In Lives Revised, Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick engages the entangled life stories of Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath to recover details, nuances, and perspectives excluded from previous biographies. Based on extensive archival work at the British Library and Emory University, as well as unpublished materials in private hands, Goodspeed-Chadwick considers how biographical storylines are constructed, reconceived, and dismantled across decades of research and interpretation. Her work plumbs the practical challenges and interpretive possibilities of biographies that engage with difficult subjects such as Wevill, Hughes, and Plath, particularly given the personal traumas, tragic ends, and competing legacies involved. Drawing on documents and recordings only recently made available to researchers, Lives Revised: Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath recovers previously inaccessible accounts about its subjects, contextualizes them within the critical traditions of feminism and trauma studies, and asks readers and scholars to rethink previous conclusions about three complex figures in literary and cultural history"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2025 Lewis P. Simpson Award

In Lives Revised, Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick engages the entangled life stories of Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath to recover details, nuances, and perspectives excluded from previous biographies. Based on extensive archival work at the British Library and Emory University, as well as unpublished materials in private hands, Goodspeed-Chadwick considers how biographical storylines are constructed, reconceived, and dismantled across decades of research and interpretation. Her work plumbs the practical challenges and interpretive possibilities of biographies that engage with difficult subjects such as Wevill, Hughes, and Plath, particularly given the personal traumas, tragic ends, and competing legacies involved.

Drawing on documents and recordings only recently made available to researchers, Lives Revised: Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath recovers previously inaccessible accounts about its subjects, contextualizes them within the critical traditions of feminism and trauma studies, and asks readers and scholars to rethink previous conclusions about three complex figures in literary and cultural history.

Review Quotes

"Assia Wevill, the shadowy third woman in the tragic triangle of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, comes blazingly alive in this groundbreaking and compassionate study by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick. An essential addition to the field."--Elaine Showalter, author of A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx

"Drawing upon new sources, Goodspeed-Chadwick enriches our understanding of Assia and Ted's story, and blows open the misogynistic and sexist tropes that have calcified around the Assia-Ted-Sylvia triangle. Goodspeed-Chadwick rewrites Assia back into literary history, and reveals the biases that prevented her life from receiving the respect and attention it deserves. This book not only restores Assia Wevill's humanity but also offers new paradigms for feminist biography."--Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath