Previously Unseen Sylvia Plath Short Story to be Published in 2019

Sylvia Plath wrote the short story, "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom," when she was 20 years old and enrolled as an undergraduate at Smith College. In an article published at The Guardian, Richard Lea writes, "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom, which describes a fateful train journey, is one of a series of standalone short fiction titles being released by Faber to mark the publisher’s 90th anniversary. From there: 

According to the Plath scholar Peter K Steinberg, it is completely unlike anything else she wrote before or after. “It’s an important work and different to what Plath’s readers are used to seeing,” Steinberg said. “So it’s exciting that it will shortly be available for reading and consideration.”

The story follows a young woman as her mother and father hustle her through the glittering halls of a cathedral-like station and on to a steam-filled platform before deserting her in a sinister carriage furnished with wine-coloured, plush seats. There Mary meets a kindly woman who guides her as the train speeds through dark tunnels and a bleak autumnal landscape.

In one of the corn fields a scarecrow caught her eye, crossed staves propped aslant, and the corn husks rotting under it. The dark ragged coat wavered in the wind, empty, without substance. And below the ridiculous figure black crows were strutting to and fro, pecking for grains in the dry ground.

At the station for the sixth kingdom, a conductor dressed in black escorts a pale woman off the train, despite her protests. Mary is relieved that the other passengers seem content, but their bland indifference about their final destination fills her companion with horror: “They won’t care until the time comes, in the ninth kingdom.”

Read more at The Guardian.