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.

On Thursday, six Sylvia Plath limited edition books are offered for sale through Forum Auctions in England. Lot 179 is a collectors dream, assembling the following books:  Lyonnesse , number 120 of 300 copies, original morocco-backed boards, , t.e.g., others uncut, slip-case, Rainbow Press, 1971; Three Women , number 168 of 180 copies, printed in red and black, illustrations by Stanislaus Gliwa, original pictorial cloth, gilt, glacine dust-jacket, Turret Books, 1978; Crystal Gazer and other poems , number 107 of 300 copies, light toning to endpapers, original cloth-backed boards, t.e.g., others uncut, slip-case, Rainbow Press, 1971; Child (Rougemont Press, 1971), A Day in June (Embers Handpress, 1981), and Million Dollar Month (Sceptre Press, 1971) round the lot out. In addition to this Plath lot, there are a number of Ted Hughes book lots. See lots 113 to 116. All links accessed 5 June 2022.

London's Folio Society has recently published an edition of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar . This edition includes a thoughtful introduction by Heather Clark and six illustrations by Alexandra Levasseur. Details on the book:  Bound in blocked cloth. Set in Verdigris. 248 pages. Frontispiece and 6 colour illustrations (including a double-page spread). Blocked slipcase. 8 ¾" x 5 ½". No apparent ISBN. I particularly like that it is set in Verdigris which is Plathian, as you may recall the line from "Death & Co.": "The nude / Verdigris of the condor." Of course the typeface has nothing to do with condor's coloring as Plath saw it, but just as a word it is a nice association.   The slipcase has a series of rectangle boxes that are designed, I imagine, to reflect the famous Shirley Tucker design for the first Faber edition.    Buy the book ! My copy was delivered swiftly! Faber and Faber will be releasing their own illustrated edition of The Bell J...

On 24 February 2022, Forum Auctions had two lots of Sylvia Plath books.  Lot 235 was just a single book, the limited edition of Lyonnesse , number 37 of 90 copies in full calf from an edition limited to 400 copies, original calf gilt by Zaehnsdorf, very slight rubbing to spine tips, t.e.g., others uncut, glacine dust-jacket, minor chipping to spine tips and corners, slip-case, folio, Rainbow Press, 1971. It sold for £460 which was more than double the high estimate of £150 - £200. Lot 236 included several limited edition books and sold for £700, which was more than double the high estimate of £200 - £300. Included in the lot were Lyonnesse , number 272 of 300 copies, original morocco-backed boards, , t.e.g., others uncut, slip-case, Rainbow Press, 1971; Three Women , number 171 of 180 copies, printed in red and black, illustrations by Stanislaus Gliwa, original pictorial cloth, gilt, Turret Books, 1978; Crystal Gazer and other poems , number 137 of 300 copies, light toning to end...

After the Bonhams auction last June where 24 copies of Sylvia Plath's 1960 limited edition of  A Winter Ship , printed by the Tragara Press was sold, I started investigating this publication. The result of this research is an article, recently published in the Spring 2022 issue of  The Book Collector The following summary inventory was written to accompany the article but had to be cut, understandably, for space issues. I am terrifically grateful to James Fleming for his support of my article and for taking it on. I would also like to thank Rebecca Rego Barry, the fine editor of Fine Books & Collections for reading an early draft of the piece. Inventory Copies with wrappers: 1: Lot 131 sold at Bonhams, June 2021, privately owned 2: Lot 140 sold at Bonhams, June 2021, privately owned 3-24: Lot 141, sold at Bonhams, June 2021 25: Lot 159, sold at Bonhams, December 2021 (for sale from Raptis Rare Books as of 23 February 2022) Copies without wrappers formerly belo...

You may have noticed on my Twitter , if you are on Twitter, or from viewing the sidebar over on the righthand side of this blog, that I have been tweeting a number of tweets of photographs of baby Frieda Hughes annotated on the back by Sylvia Plath as well as some books (translations) of Plath's work. These are eBay sales by April Star Books (who is also, as it turns out, on Instagram  and regularly posts stunning book and nature photographs, too). I am tweeting them because I like Damian, the owner of these accounts, very much and consider him a friend. We have been emailing for years and years about Plath first editions. 2021 fairly broke many a persons bank accounts with the two big Bonhams and Sotheby's auctions of the property of Frieda Hughes---sidebar WHO BOUGHT THE TAROT CARDS???---and Damian/April Star Books was the winner of a number of lots. He also purchased some books off Norman MacDonald, who has featured on this blog , of mostly translations of Sylvia Plath'...

Christie's New York had an online auction that ended Friday, 17 September 2021, of a nice looking copy of the 1963 Heinemann edition The Bell Jar with Victoria Lucas as author.   In the auction of "The Exceptional Literature Collection of Theodore B. Baum: Part Two, the copy was Lot 355 . Theodore B. Baum (1935-    ) is an American cable television company executive. The details from the auction are: "First edition of Plath's thinly veiled autobiography published in England pseudonymously a month before her February 1963 death. Plath had returned to London with her two young children during the brutally cold winter of 1962, renting a flat at 23 Fitzroy Road (an address once inhabited by William Butler Yeats). Though that autumn had been a period of intense activity as she produced the poems that would comprise Ariel , depression nonetheless overtook her. The Bell Jar , her only novel, did not appear under her own name until 1967 and, in accordance with the wishes of...

In 2019, Faber and Faber issued two new editions of The Bell Jar . They were discussed in this September 2019 blog post . As some of you may know, I read Sylvia Plath's lone published novel twice a year and have done so since 1995. I read it in June because that's the month that Plath was a guest editor for Mademoiselle in 1953 and it is also the month in which a lot of the setting of the novel takes place. And I read it in December, because that is the month in which I first read it in 1994. This blog post is drawn from my most recent read, and that is of the 90th Anniversary edition, pictured left, and published last year. It is the first time that I have read a modern (post-1990s) edition in well more than a decade. Why? Because before then, Faber had used the same typesetting of the novel that Heinemann used and thus it would have been the exact text that Plath herself saw when she received her copy of her novel in December 1962. I spotted two typographical errors...

Recently I acquired a 1971 edition of Faber's  Ariel with funds that were generously gifted at the end of last year. This one filled in a gap; I still need one printed in 1970; but the goal is to have the as complete a run as possible of editions. I cannot possibly have better life goals. Just a used edition to go with my other "reading" copies of the book from that era (1972, 1974, 1976, 1979, and 1981). In total I have now fifteen copies from which to choose.

Back in late June, Bonhams had a small series Sylvia Plath lots in their auction. Lot 238 was Plath's copy of the Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. It sold for a handsome £11,312 (roughly US$ 14,519) including the buyer's premium. That copy is now for sale through the awesome Peter Harrington Rare Books in London for the even more handsome £27,500 (roughly US$ 36,409.61). Peter Harrington also has Elizabeth's copy of Last Encounters by Trevor Thomas . That is listed for £1,250. It is featured in their Christmas 2019 catalogue (image below). All links accessed 12 and 13 November 2019. All images shamelessly pilfered from Peter Harrington's  ABE page and Christmas catalogue.

What a weekend in Boston! It was the annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fiar and as usual I browsed through booksellers stock looking specifically for Sylvia Plath books. But this fair had particular targets in view... I was particularly keen to see some of the volumes for sale that were part of the big Sylvia Plath/Ted Hughes auction at Bonhams of the property of Frieda Hughes . As such, I spent some time at a few booths. Apologies in advance for all the super dodgy cell phone photographs. But before I get to those, the primary reason for my attendance this year was to promote, sell, and sign (if wanted) some copies of both volumes of The Letters of Sylvia Plath . I was in Jett Whitehead's book for a good few hours promoting this book, talking to Jett and to many customers that stopped by. To my happiness some books sold and even some of the book dealers were buying copies. Sometimes it is hard to really consider just how many people are interested in these books...

This next weekend, 16-18 November, the Hynes Convention Center on Boylston Street, Boston, will host the 42nd annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair . This one will be a capital-D Delight. I say this because Jonkers Rare Books of Henley on Thames, England, will be showing off the most expensive Sylvia Plath proof book ever: her own proof copy of The Bell Jar  at their booth, 525. As we learned recently in the publication of The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2 , Plath received the proof shortly after she found out about Ted Hughes' affair with Assia Wevill. So her edits to the book date from after circa 10-11 July 1962. Incredible to think she was reviewing this at the same time as dealing with the marital issues as well as playing host to her mother, visiting Court Green, Devon, from Massachusetts. Anyway, I am truly excited to see this book and hope to review it carefully. Several years back I did a study of the " Textual Variations in The Bell Jar Publicat...

The Grolier Club in New York City will host the exhibition "'This is the light of the mind': Selections from the Sylvia Plath collection of Judith G. Raymo" which opens today, 20 September 2017, and runs through 4 November 2017. On Thursday, 12 October, the Grolier will host a Sylvia Plath Symposium from 6:00 PM-8:00 PM. Speakers include Karen Kukil, Associate Director of Special Collections, Smith College; Peter K. Steinberg, co-editor of The Letters of Sylvia Plath ; and Heather Clark, Fellow, Leon Levy Center for Biography, CUNY Graduate Center. Moderator: Judith Raymo. Other details TBA. No charge, but reservations are requested. RSVPs from non-members should go to Grolier Club Administrative Assistant Maev Brennan, tel. (212) 838-6690, or e-mail mbrennan@grolierclub.org. A stunningly produced catalog has been printed and copies will be for sale via Oak Knoll. Looking forward to giving a talk and to meeting who ever shows up! The Grolier Club is lo...

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 middl...