Today, 14 November 2023, was the Bonhams Fine Books and Manuscripts auction of twenty-five lots of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes books from the property, or now former property of Frieda Hughes. In the last few years, the Plath and Hughes rare book market has been simply flooded with stock but this has not, at least in the case of Plath who is more collectible than Hughes, meant that prices in the rare and antiquarian book market has stalled or leveled off.  As I have done in the past, here are a list of the sales. All prices below show hammer price first and then the final price including the buyer's premium. Please see the Bonhams website for pre-auction valuation estimates. In addition to the property of Frieda Hughes, there was a scarce uncorrected proof of the Victoria Lucas edition of The Bell Jar  in: Lot 72 :  This gorgeous book is estimated to sell for £4,000 - £5,000 (US$4,900 - US$6,200) and ultimately went for £6,144. Estimated: Untracked Hammer Price: Unt...

The following are the lots in the 14 November 2023 auction of The Property of Frieda Hughes of Sylvia Plath (lots 108-118) and Ted Hughes (lots 94-107) items. Ted Hughes: Lot 94 : HUGHES (TED) Meet My Folks!, FIRST EDITION, DEDICATION COPY, INSCRIBED, Faber and Faber, 1961 Lot 95 : HUGHES (TED) The New Poetry. A Selection Selected and Introduced by A. Alvarez, FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY TED HUGHES TO HIS PARENTS, 1962; 3 carbons TH poems of 1960s, and annotated copy of Moorehead's Cooper's Creek (6) Lot 96 : HUGHES (TED) Wodwo, FIRST EDITION AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED "To Walter [Hughes] & Alice with love from Ted, May 67", Faber and Faber, 1967 Lot 97 : HUGHES (TED) Animal Poems, UNIQUE PRESENTATION COPY, ONE OF SIX COPIES INTERLEAVED WITH ALL 14 POEMS WRITTEN OUT BY THE AUTHOR, AND AN ADDITIONAL 18 POEMS ADDED IN MANUSCRIPT, [Richard Gilbertson, [1967] Lot 98 : HUGHES (TED) The Iron Man, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENT...

Bonhams Knightsbridge is set to auction more than two dozen lots of books from the library and collection of Frieda Hughes that she was either given or inherited from her parents, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.  The date of the auction is 14 November 2023.  Copies of works by Sylvia Plath include: A Winter Ship, The Colossus, The Bell Jar, Ariel, Three Women, Crystal Gazer and Other Poems, Pursuit, Letters Home , and much, much more. Copies of works by Ted Hughes include: The Iron Giant, Birthday Letters, Howls & Whispers, Poems by Emily Dickinson, Animal Poems, Moortown Elegies, Meet My Folks!, Crow, The Iron Man, Wodwo , and more.

It is an immense honor to have been asked to teach on Sylvia Plath at the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre,  Lumb Bank, located in Heptonstall, England, in June 2023. The Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes Summer School course runs from the 18th to the 24th of June 2023, and I will be joining Heather Clark and Steve Ely, among others.  Together, we will explore the work of Sylvia Plath (and Ted Hughes) in Hughes's Yorkshire home. My own classes will focus on Plath's prose, specifically The Bell Jar . Timing is everything as I had to re-buy a copy of the novel after I sold all my books to Utica last June!    Spaces at the summer school are limited, so if you are interested in the course, please do register . I am very much looking forward to and am grateful beyond expression for this opportunity. And, I am looking forward both to meeting new people and seeing old friends.    All links accessed 11 December 2022.

In early 1998, for those of us who were alive, the poetry world was abuzz with Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and, sad to say, Jewel. The first two because of Birthday Letters . The third name, because...well, it was a dark time... In March 1998, Robert Haas was recently replaced as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress by Robert Pinksy, but he was a the author of a weekly "Poet's Choice" column in The Washington Post 's Sunday insert Book World . He would feature a poem and discuss it. It was must-read reading for me at the time; the column stopped in 2000. Did you know... Haas' "Poet's Choice" selection for Sunday 15 March 1998 was Sylvia Plath's "By Candlelight". The following week was a poem by Ted Hughes ("Crow's Nerve Fails").  I found the above clipping mixed in with some of my files as I was going through them recently.  Haas published a collection of his "Poet's Choice" essays in 2...

Because I had a rare moment of prescience in 2017, I saved all the web material related to Ken Lopez's failed attempt to sell Harriet Rosenstein's archive . Having access to the shoddy inventory proved useful. In fact, it was a source of hours of conversation and speculation with David Trinidad between 2017 and the archives opening at Emory in January 2020. In particular, the folder of Elizabeth Sigmund's papers were of interest. On the day the photographer I hired took pictures of the Sigmund folder , the much dreamed about and discussed files became a reality. That is, until the syncing up problems happened.  This is what Lopez wrote: Elizabeth Compton-Sigmund - large file, including correspondence, notes from over Sylvia’s desk, SP drawing (copies) Original Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath letter - 7/62, 3 pp. holograph by Ted Hughes, one page holograph by Sylvia Plath copy of a letter from Assia Wevill to Sylvia Plath, 1 pg. re tapestry 2 pp. holograph notes; 3 pp. ALS; I...

The University of Huddersfield bolstered its burgeoning archival collections with its recent acquisition of the "Mark Hinchliffe Ted Hughes Collection." It features also materials created by, owned by, etc. of Sylvia Plath, Leonard Baskin, Assia Wevill, and Nicholas Hughes, to name a few prominent people.  A preliminary cataloging of the papers was released recently and is visible online here . Steve Ely comments the collection "comprises over 170 items, including signed first editions of dozens of Hughes’ trade, limited-edition and fine-press publications; original letters written by Hughes and his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath; signed and annotated books from Hughes’s personal collection; and, some absolutely unique items: a very fine ceramic jaguar sculpted by Hughes in 1967, the only intact example anywhere in the world of Hughes’s work in the plastic arts." ( Press Release ) Item 3, a ceramic jaguar with the letter 'A' on it, made the news in 2011 ....

Sometimes your breath is taken away. Sometimes you wish you were filthy rich. Sometimes these things happen at the very same moment. Yesterday, a rare photograph of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes taken by James Coyne in 1958 was made available on the market by James Cummins Bookseller in New York City . Priced at $25,000, the photograph includes a note from Plath to her in-laws Edith and William Hughes.    Several other images of Plath and Hughes from this session are well known. One was included as is mentioned by Plath and in Cummins' description in the article "Four Young Poets" in  January 1959 issue of Mademoiselle .  Cummins also has for sale a copy of the limited edition Trois Poèmes Inédits , which has been featured on this blog before. I thought I wrote more than what I did and more recently. But, clearly I am mistaken. All links accessed 26 April 2022. If you benefited from this post or any content on the Sylvia Plath Info Blog, my website for Sylvia Plath ( ...

Please join Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and me at an event tomorrow, Thursday the 6th of January 2022, hosted by our publisher, the LSU Press, on our recent publication The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill . Registration information is here . It will be recorded, but we would love for you to witness our talk live. The starting time is 2 pm Central US time (12 noon Pacific time/3 PM Eastern US time/8 PM London time/9 PM Dortmund time). Buy the book! Please! Looking forward to seeing you then! All links accessed 28 December 2021.

Published today by the LSU Press is The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill , co-edited by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg. ISBN: 9780807171356. The book is available directly from the  LSU website , and, as well, via  Amazon  and other book websites. Please consider buying from local, independent bookstores. If you live outside of the US you can order it from Book Depository or from the press directly. Thank you for considering buying our book. Please join us this Saturday for a Zoom book launch! 1 p.m. New York time. The description of the book: " The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill marks a significant development in literary recovery efforts related to Assia Wevill (1927–1969), who remains a critically important figure in the life and work of the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Sylvia Plath and the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. Editors Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg located over 150 texts authored by Assia Wevill and curated them in...

One of the most memorable days during the years-long process of editing The Letters of Sylvia Plath was the day that copies of 16 letters to Ted Hughes and 18 letters to Edith and William Hughes, his parents, arrived at my doorstep. I vaguely knew they were coming but that hardly actually prepares one to see an envelope, with my name written on it in Frieda Hughes' distinctive hand, appearing in the mailbox at the end of the driveway. I pulled it out of mailbox gingerly, like it was the most fragile object in the world. When I opened it, I'm pretty sure I squeaked. Truly. The black and white photocopies provided enough information about the letters to make transcription possible. There were a smattering of copies of envelopes included, some of which belonged to letters not included in the bounty of stuff Frieda sent. Which begs the eternal question: where are the letters that were stuffed into these envelopes? Who wrote it? Plath? Hughes? Both? And what would their Hollywood...

As Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes wended their way back to Massachusetts from their counter-clockwise trip across the continent of North America, one of their final stops before reaching Wellesley was to visit Uncle Frank and Aunt Louise Bowman Schober.   After they married in Winthrop in June 1942, the Schobers found themselves in Ohio for a spell before returning east. They settled in the university town of Villanova, outside of Philadelphia. The wedding photograph, right, was taken in front of the Bowman house at 27 Thornton Street, Winthrop.  Plath and Hughes had traveled somewhat hurriedly through the south after they stayed a few days with her Aunt Frieda Heinrichs, zooming through New Mexico (Carlsbad Caverns), Texas, Louisiana (New Orleans), Mississippi, Tennessee (Sewanee), Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania (Villanova). Please do read the Volume II of the Letters of Sylvia Plath as well as David Trinidad's wonderful essay, " On the Road with Sylvia and T...

On 19 February 1956, 65 years ago today, Sylvia Plath was in Whitstead at Cambridge writing in her journal. It was a Sunday night. That day she had walked to Grantchester with Christopher Levenson, the skies were gray and the landscape white but visible were browns and greens of the earth. She met John Lythgoe for tea and she read in Macbeth . These details are from her pocket calendar. Her simultaneously kept desk calendar, which tracked her academic doings, indicated she was with Chris from 10 to 1 and John from 2 to 7. It details that she finished reading O'Neill and read Ronsard, Webster, and Euripides in addition to Macbeth.  She wrote one letter that day, to Jon Rosenthal.  Her journal, written that night, details quite a bit more. It started out almost as a letter: "To whom it may concern: Every now and then there comes a time when the neutral and impersonal forces of the world turn and come together in a thunder-crack of judgment." And she went on to say: Today my...

It is true. Sylvia Plath stole someone's thunder. She did it twice. To Ted Hughes, no less, within months of marrying him.  In the first days of October 1956, Sylvia Plath was at Whitstead in Cambridge, England, writing a blitzkrieg of letters to Ted Hughes and receiving a nearly equal amount of letters from him. It was a daily thing. Reading these letters leaves one probably feeling breathless.  According to her calendars, on the 8th and the 11th of October, Plath was at work writing a story called "The Wishing Box" , and it was here that she stole Hughes' thunder. In the story, Agnes Higgins is envious of her husband Harold Higgins' dreams. The end of the story is grim as Agnes takes an overdose of pills. But before this, Plath's protagonist writes about two of her husbands' dreams in particular... Agnes wrote of the former, "Harold dreamed that a red fox ran through his kitchen, grievously burnt, its fur charred black, bleeding from several wounds....

When I read  The Bell Jar  it is my hope to see something new. To make a connection within the novel itself or perhaps some connection to Plath's own lived life and experiences. In this particular read in June 2020, I was giddy when I noticed the parallels between Doreen's first meeting with Lenny Shepherd and Esther Greenwood's decidedly different first meeting with Marco. In fact, Esther's "I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life" feels like foreshadowing. So, let us begin... Doreen is dressed in white. She is so white "she looked silver". Esther dresses in black. Lenny approaches Doreen (and Esther) in the cab; Esther is brought to Marco by Doreen. Lenny's skeevy friends laugh from their safe distance under the awning of a bar. Laughter is heard through the door when Esther arrives to meet Marco; and someone laughs when Marco suggests he might "perform some small ...

The LSU Press publishes today Reclaiming Assia Wevill: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Literary Imagination by Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick. From the description: Reclaiming Assia Wevill: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Literary Imagination reconsiders cultural representations of Assia Wevill (1927–1969), according her a more significant position than a femme fatale or scapegoat for marital discord and suicide in the lives and works of two major twentieth-century poets. Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick’s innovative study combines feminist recovery work with discussions of the power and gendered dynamics that shape literary history. She focuses on how Wevill figures into poems by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, showing that they often portrayed her in harsh, conflicted, even demeaning terms. Their representations of Wevill established condemnatory narratives that were perpetuated by subsequent critics and biographers and in works of popular culture. In Plath’s literary treatments, Goo...

The following is a guest blog post by Amy C. Rea about her recent visit to Cornucopia, Wisconsin. All text and photographs are copyright to her. Thank you, Amy! ~pks 60 years ago, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes undertook a road trip circling America with visits to Canada and Mexico tucked into the northern and southern ends of the expedition. (For a wonderfully detailed and researched overview of this trip, see David Trinidad's On the Road with Sylvia and Ted: Plath and Hughes’s 1959 Trip Across America .) They began their trek on July 7, and a week later, found themselves in a small north-central Wisconsin town called Cornucopia. There they found a farm on the shores of Lake Superior owned by Andrew and Helen Nozel, who graciously agreed to let them camp on their property for two nights. Recently my husband and I took a road trip from our home in Minnesota to Bayfield, a charming small town on Wisconsin's Lake Superior shore (called the South Shore, as opposed to Minnesota...