The Letters of Sylvia Plath may have dominated your attention this autumn, but Faber and Faber reissued two classic Sylvia Plath poetry books on 5 October: Crossing the Water and Winter Trees.
Both of these first appeared in England in 1971 and serve as a bridge of poems between The Colossus and Ariel to Plath's growing legions of readers and fans. The contents of these editions varies between England and the US and it is all really rather too involved to go into now for the purpose of this blog post, which is to encourage you to buy these two books!
Faber's reissue reset the text for both books and made other house-style changes such as, for example, bringing their covers up to their current design. They are gorgeously sleek and clean looking. You can see the historical covers over on my main website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is.
One small change to note, though, involved updating the poem title of "Small Hours" to "Barren Woman". The poem was originally published as "Small Hours" in the London Magazine (August 1961) and later in the 1971 edition of Crossing the Water. However, in Plath's Collected Poems (1981) the title changed to "Barren Woman". At some point between its appearance in London Magazine and her death, Plath renamed "Small Hours" to "Barren Woman". The title change is reflected, Karen V. Kukil has observed, in the typescript of Ariel Plath prepared before her death.
You can buy both books on Faber's website, or via Amazon.co.uk (Crossing the Water and Winter Trees), and through other book retailers.
All links accessed: 17 and 18 October 2017.
Both of these first appeared in England in 1971 and serve as a bridge of poems between The Colossus and Ariel to Plath's growing legions of readers and fans. The contents of these editions varies between England and the US and it is all really rather too involved to go into now for the purpose of this blog post, which is to encourage you to buy these two books!
Faber's reissue reset the text for both books and made other house-style changes such as, for example, bringing their covers up to their current design. They are gorgeously sleek and clean looking. You can see the historical covers over on my main website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is.
One small change to note, though, involved updating the poem title of "Small Hours" to "Barren Woman". The poem was originally published as "Small Hours" in the London Magazine (August 1961) and later in the 1971 edition of Crossing the Water. However, in Plath's Collected Poems (1981) the title changed to "Barren Woman". At some point between its appearance in London Magazine and her death, Plath renamed "Small Hours" to "Barren Woman". The title change is reflected, Karen V. Kukil has observed, in the typescript of Ariel Plath prepared before her death.
You can buy both books on Faber's website, or via Amazon.co.uk (Crossing the Water and Winter Trees), and through other book retailers.
All links accessed: 17 and 18 October 2017.
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