Sylvia Plath: The price is up!

In a recent ABEbooks.com search, I looked at all books by Sylvia Plath and sorted the results by highest price. The copy for sale of the Heinemann edition of The Colossus and other poems, for sale by James Jaffe, recently rose from $50,000 to $65,000. A full description of this fine, rare collectible is here.

Not only is the first Heinemann edition of The Colossus highly collectible, but this one is signed by Plath and was given to another highly regarded, famous poet, Theodore Roethke. What makes this book even more valuable is the fact that it is an "association copy". According to the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA), a association copy is "A book once belonging to the author, or signed or annotated by the author to someone closely associated with the author of the book or the book itself in some way. Also, a book inscribed by its author to a famous person, or owned by someone of interest."

The price of a book can go up for any number of reasons. Plath, if you will, had a great 2007, which saw a number of books published as well as the Symposium that took place in Oxford in late October. Plath titles remaing collectible, but I am unsure whether or not it is a necessarily competitive market. Prices, however, rarely go down, as is evidenced by the $15,000 jump in the Jaffe Colossus.

One of the only other association copies of The Colossus was Ted Hughes's copy, also signed by Plath. The bookseller Rick Gekoski handled this book and wrote about it in his book Nabokov's Butterfly. (In the UK, this book was published as Tolkien's Gown.) Plath's signature on anything is exceedingly scarce, which is not too surprising given her early departure.

Please note: The image attached to this posting is not the Jaffe book.

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