Skip to main content

Sneak Preview of Sylvia Plath/Ted Hughes Bonhams Auction Lots


Maev Kennedy wrote in today's print edition of The Guardian about the forthcoming Bonhams auction:  "Writers' Lives: Auction offers intimate glimpses inside the marriage of Plath and Hughes" (pg 7). The article, though, posted online yesterday. It's safe to say in the Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes realm, the news went viral.

Frieda Hughes is set to auction about 108 lots of items from the estates of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and Olwyn Hughes that she inherited. The range of items is breathtaking for peanut-crunchers and collectors, archivists, and librarians. Clothing, jewelry, personal library books, typescripts, and realia such as furniture. The items reflect the lives of, at a minimum, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Frieda Hughes, Nicholas Hughes, Olwyn Hughes, William Hughes, Edith Hughes, Otto Plath, and Aurelia Plath.

When I learned about the auction in December it was really hard to obey the request for confidentiality. But, I did it! When I saw the early catalogue last, which was honored to proof and to edit, I was practically hyperventilating. I have been given the go-ahead to post a few of them here.

However, please keep in mind this is early, and titles, descriptions, and maybe even pricing is subject to change. The full catalogue will be available about a month before the 21 March 2018 auction date.


PLATH (SYLVIA) - PHOTO FRAME
Green leather folding double photo frame, gilt blocked "S.P." and "June 15, 1954" on the upper cover, slightly rubbed, 215 x 165mm., [1954]

£200 - 400


PLATH (SYLVIA) - JEWELLERY
Plath's "dragon" pendant and chain, with maker's stamp "Coro", base metal, openwork Maltese Cross design flanked by two dragons, some wear, diameter 50mm., [1950s]

£2,000 - 3,000







HUGHES (TED)
Meet My Folks!, FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED TO SYLVIA PLATH "To Sylvia with all my love from Ted, April 1st, 1961", illustrations by George Adamson, publisher's pictorial boards, dust-jacket [Sagar/Tabor A4], small 4to, Faber and Faber, 1961

£2,000 - 3,000


PLATH (SYLVIA) - CLOTHING
A Japanese blue embroidered silk jacket, light blue lining, 4 toggled "frog" buttons and mandarin collar, shoulders faded, label "Made in Japan"; A blue collarless tunic top, damask pattern, with label "Made in Italy. Dickins and Jones, Regent Street" (2)

£400 - 600


HUGHES (TED)
Animal Poems, SPECIAL PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO HIS SON, WITH 9 MANUSCRIPT POEMS, interleaved, with the additional manuscript poems written in black in on 10 pages (including the title), manuscript correction by Hughes to one printed poem ("Otter"), green morocco gilt by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, g.e., slipcase [Sagar/Tabor A13], 4to, [Richard Gilbertson, [1967]

£2,000 - 3,000


Are your appetite's whetted? Start saving your pennies!

All links accessed 24 January 2018.

Popular posts from this blog

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

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

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last