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Sylvia Plath wrote "The Bed Book" in the spring of 1959. By June of that year she was actively marketing it; but in her lifetime it never came to be printed. In 1976, both Faber and Harper & Row brought out editions in the UK, illustrated by Quentin Blake and in the US, with illustrations by Emily Arnold McCully.

While not included in any bibliography to date, excerpts of "The Bed Book" were printed in two American periodicals in 1976.

In October 1976, Woman's Day published it. Though excerpted, there are some textual variations, mostly to do with stanza structure, capitalization, etc. This publications includes beautiful color illustrations by Sal Murdocca. It appears on pages 98-99.

In December, Cricket, a magazine for children, printed 'Beds'. Like the above, it is excerpted and there are textual variations. This publication includes black and white illustrations by Emily McCully, on pages 32-38. The illustrations are the same as the ones which appeared in the trade publications. I suspect between the two you'd get the whole poem?...

The two covers of these periodicals appear here. They, and others, can also be found on the thumbnail gallery page of my website for Sylvia Plath.
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