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Sylvia Plath's Ariel Anomaly

To be sung to the tune of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back":

I like rare books and I cannot lie!
The mass market paperback can just die...


Rare books can sometimes be like watching sports. In sports, on any given day you may see something that has never been done before. In the case of books, you might suddenly see a copy of something that you did not know existed. In December, while browsing around ABEbooks.com, this very thing happened.

One of the more memorable and famous books from the 20th century, which is celebrating 50 years of publication this coming March, was Sylvia Plath's Ariel. A copy of Plath's Ariel, a Faber first edition, second impression, recently came across my view. But it was unusual. The dust wrapper was different. The first editions that I have seen and held have three bands of color on the face and spine. Blue at the top taking up the majority of the space with the words ARIEL in yellow, as if cut out; then that yellow in the middle with "Poems by / Sylvia Plath" in black, and then a beautiful solid red color band along the bottom, hinting that the the poems inside are a "blood-flush"; "blood hot and personal".

However, the jacket presented for sale by the bookseller had as the image the book with only two colors: blue and yellow. Missing is that red band at the bottom. I did a quick search for other examples for sale of the second impression, but all copies with bookseller supplied photos had present the red band. At its price was most affordable, even to a poor archivist like me, so I snatched it up. This particular copy has the stain of a previous owners name "d f gough" on the ffep (front free end paper), but otherwise is virtually clear of other markings throughout the book. It does have one other peculiarity which is present in at least one other first edition, second impression of Ariel that I have seen: the type did not strike fully on the copyright page leaving a gap in the copyright year.

Ariel (Faber, 1965). First edition, second impression.
Lacking red color band at bottom.
Ariel (Faber, 1965). First edition, second impression & sadly price-clipped.
With red color band but sadly price-clipped.
I have reached out to the archives of Faber to see if they can tell me anything about the book.  In some ways the book and wrapper feels like a proof. An email recently from Faber archivist Robert Brown was not able to shed any additional light on the dust wrapper, and it was his suspicion that it was most likely a printing error. I have been unable also to find other examples of this particular impression with this particular two-colored wrapper. Naturally I do not think that does not mean they do not exist, but it is nice feeling that I have something unique.

All links accessed 9 January 2015.

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