Books

First edition, first impression, of the author's first posthumous poetry collection, her second overall, published two years after her suicide. Plath believed her Ariel poems to be the best she had produced and accurately predicted to her mother that "they will make my name" (Letters, p. 468). The collection was edited by Ted Hughes, who slightly altered Plath's ordering of the poems, omitted 13 pieces, and added another ten. According to Frieda Hughes, her father "wished to give the book a broader perspective in order to make it more acceptable to readers, rather than alienate them" (Ariel: The Restored Edition, 2007, p. xvi). While Ted Hughes's decisions have been the subject of criticism, he was successful in creating out of Ariel Plath's most enduring poetry book, the one which first gained her significant literary recognition and precipitated her rise to fame among scholars and cult followers alike. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Slight lean to spine, light spots and one mark to edges and endpapers, offsetting to endpapers, contents clean. A very good copy indeed, in like dust jacket, unclipped, spine panel faded, short closed tear to foot of front panel, a couple of light marks, else bright. Tabor A5a. Sylvia Plath, Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950-1963, 1975.