Sylvia Plath Bonhams Auction: The Results

Bonhams Knightsbridge held a Fine Books, Atlases and Manuscripts auction today 16 March 2016.

There were six lots of Sylvia Plath items, Lots 140-145. All lots sold and the typed letter in a birthday card was the big seller. Congrats to the owner(s) of this material!

Here follows the results:

Lot 140
Sylvia Plath
Autograph drafts, notes, drawings and doodles for her story "Stardust", comprising a page of fairy sketches (with three red lipstick kisses applied by the author), [1946-47]
Sold for £5,000 / US$7,088

Lot 141
Sylvia Plath
Birthday card to her mother with autograph message signed ("much love to my favourite mummy! your Sivvy"), with a long typed letter within, Friday, 24 April [1953]
Sold for £6,000 / US$8,605

Lot 142
Sylvia Plath
Collection of typescripts of nine early poems, including "Ice Age", "In Memoriam", "Incident", "Crossing the Equinox" and others
The other poems are: "I Have Found the Perfect World", "Have You Forgotten?", "Humoresque", "Gone is the River", and "Gold Mouths Cry" ["The Bronze Boy"]
Sold for £3,500 / US$4,962

Lot 143
Sylvia Plath
Group of six typescript poems, including "Female Author', most with autograph revisions or corrections, all but the first with her name ("Sylvia Plath") and address at Lawrence House, Smith College, typed at the head, Lawrence House, Smith College [1954-55]
The other poems are: "On Looking into the Eyes of a Demon Lover", "Morning in the Hospital Solarium", "Prologue to Spring", "Trio of Love Songs" ["Parallax"], and "The Trial of Man"
Sold for £3,750 / US$5,316

Lot 144
Sylvia Plath
Two typed and autograph drafts of her poem "Admonitions" (here entitled "'Never Try to Know More Than You Should'", above a quotation from Paradise Lost), [1954-5]
Sold for £4,750 / US$6,734

Lot 145
Sylvia Plath
Two photographs given by Sylvia Plath to her mother Aurelia, the first showing her and her husband Ted Hughes, the second showing her in a garden wearing a sundress [The second photograph dates to July-August 1949 and was taken in the yard at 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley.]
Sold for £2,375 / US$3,367

Unrelated to the above, an addition Sylvia Plath related item was included in the auction:
Lot 146
Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar, First Edition, Heinemann, 1963
Sold for £3,750 / US$5,316

All links accessed 16 March 2016.

Comments

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove...

Some final photographs of Sylvia Plath

Susan O'Neill-Roe took a series of photographs of Sylvia Plath and her children from October to late November (or maybe early December) 1962 while she was a day nanny/mother's help at Court Green. From nearby Belstone , it was a short drive to North Tawton and the aid she provided enabled Plath to complete the masterful October and November poems and also to make day or overnight trips to London for poetry business and other business. Some of O'Neill-Roe's photographs are well-known. However, a cache of photographs formed a part of the papers of failed biographer Harriet Rosenstein. They were sold separately from the rest of her papers that went to Emory. I was fortunate enough to see low resolution scans of them a while back so please note these are being posted today as mere reference quality images. There are two series here. The first of the children with Plath dressed in red and black. (This should be referred to in the future, please, as Plath's Stendhal-c...

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de...

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