(This is final part of Five part essay that was originally published in the literary journal drafthorse.)

Much of Anne Sexton’s voluminous correspondence deals with money matters. She never shied away from the importance of getting paid for her work. In 1961 she wrote to her friend, the poet W. D. Snodgrass, “I signed a first reading contract with the New Yorker. You get $100 just for signing…but it hasn’t changed my poetry at all.”

A few years later (1968) Sexton wrote a terse note to Howard Moss at the New Yorker asking him, “Why does Ed Sissman get $300 for signing his contract and I get $100? What more is there to say?”

In 1962 she wrote to poet, teacher, and friend George Starbuck, “…read a script a few weeks ago and got 25 bucks reading fee…reading bad poems. I now make (if you can stand this) $250 bucks a reading plus expenses. Keee rist!!!

Ten years later she again wrote to George Starbuck, about teaching at Boston University. “…If John Barth doesn’t come back next year and you pay his replacement four grand per course more than I am getting I’m going to wonder if a woman’s fist shouldn’t be painted on my classroom door!!! Even if John Barth stays at his same salary I’m going to wonder. I know it is a desperate time of money at B. U. but if a man gets it then why doesn’t a woman? Need I list my qualifications as a writer, teacher etc? If I’m important I want to be paid importantly.”

Sylvia Plath, another prolific letter and journal writer, candidly mentions the link between her writing and financial considerations throughout her adult life. Her correspondence is peppered with references to prize money (and what it would pay for), amount of payment for her poems, and the constant struggle she and her husband the poet Ted Hughes had balancing a creative life with the realities of household economics.

On November 13, 1956, shortly after her marriage to Hughes, Plath wrote dispiritedly to her mother about, “…two rejections of poems and stories from the disdainful New Yorker.” In the same letter, Plath wrote, “The next two months will be very hard… Ted has not yet got a job… He may have to take a laboring job for these first few months to cover coal, electricity, gas and food bills.”

Success at the New Yorker did come eventually, and with it the promise of money for hard work done. In a 1958 letter to her brother Warren, Plath was joyous, “VERY GOOD NEWS: In the mail I just got my first acceptance from the New Yorker! In our materialistic way, Ted and I figured, amid much jumping up and down, this should mean close to $350, or three full months of Boston rent! For two poems!”

A scant five years later, on January 16, 1963, Plath wrote to her mother Aurelia, after the devastating breakup of her marriage. “…if only I could have some windfall, like doing a really successful novel, and buy this house, this ghastly vision of rent bleeding away year after year would vanish, and I could almost be self-supporting with rent from the other two flats – that is my dream. How I would like to be self-supporting on my writing! But I need time.”

One month later Sylvia Plath died by her own hand.

(The entire essay, here in 5 parts, originally  appeared in the literary journal drafthorse. The last part of this essay will appear here tomorrow. Stay tuned!)

Knowing what we know today about the poet Elizabeth Bishop’s talent and fame, one might be surprised that she too was beset throughout her life with financial woes. Much of her correspondence discusses poetry that she sold, and how much she sold it for. In June 1941, she wrote to her friend Charlotte Russell, “I was so touched by your offer of a LOAN. Thank you very much… I’m gradually getting out of the red now, although I have a bill collector on my tail.”

Much of Bishop’s authorial correspondence is taken up by talk of Guggenheims, fellowships to Yaddo or Bread Loaf, Fulbright grants, and other arts awards with monetary value. In 1978, when Elizabeth Bishop was sixty-seven she wrote to her friend – professor and lecturer Ashley Brown, “This weekend I go to Washington, in two weeks or so to Durham, and from there to Arkansas – then Storrs, Conn., and later on Bennington. This is all to earn $$$, I’m afraid – because I’m not teaching now – and hope never to again! If I get a Guggenheim (I think I may) I can probably just make it for a year – and then I hope ‘something will turn up.’ I want desperately to do some work of my own.”

A year later, on June 3, 1979, Bishop wrote to publisher Robert Giroux asking him for a recommendation for a $15,000 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (she didn’t get the Fellowship). “I have lived on handouts for so long I hesitate to send you this. However, I hope you’ll be willing to recommend me. I’m afraid I live beyond my means in Massachusetts & should probably move to Utah or Florida – but I don’t want to!” She died four months later.

(Continued from last two posts.)

Another writer who was also a first class adventurer, and who also loved the American West was Robert Louis Stevenson. Although Scottish by birth, Stevenson saw himself as a true citizen of the world. He decided to write about his travels at an early age, despite the lack of a personal fortune, and a family that was less than supportive. His closest friend and publisher, Sir Sidney Colvin, later published many of Stevenson’s letters – out of a truly voluminous correspondence (one wonders what the advent of e-mail has done to this unique and fascinating literary genre of authorial correspondence). And Stevenson’s letters often mention his financial problems, especially in his early years when his writing did not yet support him.

In a letter to his mother in 1879 (Stevenson would have been twenty-nine years old then, and was temporarily living in London – he had just published Travels With A Donkey) he writes: “After a desperate struggle with the elements of every sort and principally money, I arrived last night in London, the possessor of 4 shillings. You can count on me for Friday next absolutely; but unless some money is sent I shall probably have died of hunger in the meanwhile. You will laugh when you hear my troubles; I have lain in pawn and lived on charity most free. I think you are wrong about my work; I believe there is an element of idleness in my present collapse, which I mean to evince as soon as I arrive. I am astonished at the reviews I have seen; they are very kind.”

Several months later, arriving in Monterey, California, where he hoped to marry, and would spend a good deal of time, Stevenson wrote to another of his publishers, W. E. Henley, “At times I get terribly frightened about my work, which seems to advance too slowly. I hope soon to have a greater burthen to support, and must make money a great deal quicker than I used. I may get nothing for the Vendetta; I may only get some forty for the Emigrant; I cannot hope to have them both done much before the end of November.”

In a collection of letters from Katherine Mansfield to her lover and then husband John Middleton Murry, dating from 1913-1922, Mansfield continually bemoans their lack of financial resources. Her letters are exquisite in their attention to the details of her surroundings, and very intimately frank and charming with her unabashed love for Murry; but most of the letters also discuss in detail their penury as it relates to their chosen careers as writers. On March 25, 1915 Mansfield wrote to Murry, “I had a great day yesterday. The Muses descended in a ring, like the angels Botticelli Nativity roof – or so it seemed to ‘humble’ little Tig, and I fell into the open arms of my first novel. I have finished a huge chunk.”

Just two days later Mansfield anxiously writes again, “I am really worried about money for you. Will you have got another cheque by now? I do hope to Heaven that you have. I always feel you become wicked and don’t spend enough on food if you’re hard up and you are really rather dependent on good meals – if you only knew it. I shall be eating chestnut buds if Kay doesn’t send me my money some time next week.” Until her premature death at the age of thirty-four from tuberculosis and other serious illnesses, Mansfield’s anxiety over practicing her art and having to worry about money often consumed her.

Ernest Hemingway was considered a successful writer during his lifetime, but his correspondence also shows that his literary success didn’t provide immunity from money problems. In a 1928 letter to his editor Maxwell Perkins he wrote detailing his problems with advances and concerns about getting enough cash for his work, “I worry about the whole business…and am prevented from writing the stories I wanted to do now in between by worrying about these bloody matters.”

Dawn Powell, a writer who worked at her craft steadily, while on the brink of the economic abyss her whole life, died in obscurity and poverty. On April 12, 1935 she wrote in her diary, “Fear is such an utterly disrupting force – fear of no publisher, fear of cringing once more before debtors, fear of being trapped in the Middle West again and dependent on relatives – so that this panic creeps in my pen or typewriter, and nothing is possible.”

Things hadn’t improved much by 1959, when she wrote, again in her diary, “We have about sixty cents between us, and Post check doesn’t come.”