The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963

by Sylvia Plath

Overview

“Engaging and revealing, The Letters of Sylvia Plath offers a captivating look into the life and inner thinking of one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.” — Paul Alexander, Washington Post

The second volume in the definitive, complete collection of the letters of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Sylvia Plath, from the early years of her marriage to Ted Hughes to the final days leading to her suicide in 1963, many never before seen.

One of the most talented and beloved poets, Sylvia Plath continues to fascinate and inspire the modern literary imagination. The tragedy of her untimely death at age thirty, almost fifty-five years ago, has left much unknown about her creative and personal life. In this remarkable second volume of the iconic poet and writer’s collected letters, the full range of Plath’s ambitions, talents, fears, and perspective is made visible through her own powerful words.

As engaging as they are revealing, these remarkable letters cover the years from 1957 to 1963. They detail the last six tumultuous and prolific years of her life, covering her marriage to Ted Hughes, the births of her children Frieda and Nicholas, her early success, including the publication of the classic The Bell Jar, and her ongoing struggle with depression.

The first compendium of its kind to include all of Plath’s letters from this period, The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 2 offers an intimate portrait of the writing life and mind of one of the most celebrated poets in literary history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062740588
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Pages:	1088
Sales rank:	447,563
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.50(d)

About the Author

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.

Date of Birth:

October 27, 1932

Date of Death:

February 11, 1963

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Place of Death:

London, England

Education:

B.A., Smith College, 1955; Fulbright Scholar, Cambridge University

Editorial Reviews

One could certainly be forgiven for thinking that no remaining bit of Sylvia Plath scholarship could change one's view of the much analyzed poet. However, the adroitly edited new collection of her letters, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963, which spans her entire marriage to the English poet Ted Hughes and its aftermath, and includes many letters that had not previously been published, provides one of the most vivid and intimate accounts of her life to date. In particular, these letters vastly enrich our understanding of Plath's state of mind leading up to her suicide, which has been patchy and sparse, in part because of Hughes's decision to destroy her final journal. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath ends in early July 1962, right before the ultimate crisis in their marriage, so the new collection of letters offers a fresh look at her struggle with Hughes and the last wild months of her life.

The New York Times Book Review - Katie Roiphe

★ 08/06/2018
Completing the monumental task of collecting all of Plath’s known and available letters, this volume goes from her 24th birthday in October 1956 to a week before her suicide, at age 30, in February 1963. Opening on a young writer determined to publish and a deliriously happy newlywed gushing about her husband, fellow poet Ted Hughes, the book follows Plath as she finishes her Fulbright at Cambridge; teaches for a year at her alma mater, Smith College; and then returns to England to settle into a country house in Devon. The collection is mordantly fascinating as it reveals a brilliant, complex woman trying to carve out her own time for writing in between secretarial tasks for her husband (she typed his manuscripts), caring for their two children, and housework. The book becomes downright agonizing after Hughes leaves her and Plath is left fighting “the return of my madness,” even as she produces her best work, the poems comprising the collection Ariel, with a feeling of “writing in the blitz, bombs exploding all round.” Unobtrusively edited and scrupulously footnoted, this set of letters is a dazzling literary achievement, capturing the tender beauty of Plath’s richly lived, too short life. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

“As the marriage faltered, the masks fell away…Plath wrote honestly of her unhappiness and fear…In 14 recently uncovered letters to the psychiatrist who’d treated her since her suicide attempt in college, we see Plath at her most vulnerable. It feels almost taboo to read these, so unabashed is her pain and humiliation…But in her final letters there was a note of wild, almost unbearable optimism. Inspiration ran like a tap; poems were pouring out of her. It seemed impossible that she would not make it.” — Alexandra Alter, New York Times

“The Plath we initially encounter in these letters seems very far from the person who, just a few years earlier, had attempted suicide with her mother’s sleeping pills; and perhaps even farther from the person who, a few years later, gassed herself in her London kitchen. Above all, we see Plath on the move… She comes off, most often, as a whirlwind… it’s the alertness to daily life that makes Plath’s letters most poignant. Few writers have been as intensely attentive to quotidian details as Plath was, or understood so intuitively what to preserve in their art. A detail appears, uneventful on its face, first in a journal or a drawing, then in a letter, sometimes more than one. Her mind was brilliantly off-kilter, its emphasis falling in surprising places.” — The New Yorker

“Here is the more or less abrupt shedding, in extremis, of the 'stiff,' 'artificial' voice that infected her early poems and stories and from which she had been working to free herself for many years. The book provides, in the end, an account of an ordinary anguish out of which Plath produced something extraordinary.” — Harper's Magazine

“An exemplary edition offering a textured portrait of an iconic poet.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“This set of letters is a dazzling literary achievement, capturing the tender beauty of Plath’s richly lived, too short life.” — Publishers Weekly

“A shattering chronicle of a woman’s struggle to be both a pathbreaking artist and a domestic paragon…Together, these two volumes accentuate the wonder of all that Plath accomplished by age 30, and her poetry, fiction, journals, and letters will remain forever alive, daring, urgent, and electrifying.” — People

“In Plath’s appeals to Beuscher she is plainly desperate for help, yet the rhythms of her sentences, her bitter humor, and the flamboyant performance of her plight reveal the artist at work as much as the woman in pain.” — Emily Cooke, Book Forum

From the Publisher

A shattering chronicle of a woman’s struggle to be both a pathbreaking artist and a domestic paragon…Together, these two volumes accentuate the wonder of all that Plath accomplished by age 30, and her poetry, fiction, journals, and letters will remain forever alive, daring, urgent, and electrifying.

Starred Review Booklist

Here is the more or less abrupt shedding, in extremis, of the “stiff,” “artificial” voice that infected her early poems and stories and from which she had been working to free herself for many years. The book provides, in the end, an account of an ordinary anguish out of which Plath produced something extraordinary.

Harper's Magazine

In Plath’s appeals to Beuscher she is plainly desperate for help, yet the rhythms of her sentences, her bitter humor, and the flamboyant performance of her plight reveal the artist at work as much as the woman in pain.

Emily Cooke

As the marriage faltered, the masks fell away…Plath wrote honestly of her unhappiness and fear…In 14 recently uncovered letters to the psychiatrist who’d treated her since her suicide attempt in college, we see Plath at her most vulnerable. It feels almost taboo to read these, so unabashed is her pain and humiliation…But in her final letters there was a note of wild, almost unbearable optimism. Inspiration ran like a tap; poems were pouring out of her. It seemed impossible that she would not make it.

Parul Sehgal

The Plath we initially encounter in these letters seems very far from the person who, just a few years earlier, had attempted suicide with her mother’s sleeping pills; and perhaps even farther from the person who, a few years later, gassed herself in her London kitchen. Above all, we see Plath on the move… She comes off, most often, as a whirlwind… it’s the alertness to daily life that makes Plath’s letters most poignant. Few writers have been as intensely attentive to quotidian details as Plath was, or understood so intuitively what to preserve in their art. A detail appears, uneventful on its face, first in a journal or a drawing, then in a letter, sometimes more than one. Her mind was brilliantly off-kilter, its emphasis falling in surprising places.

The New Yorker

The Plath we initially encounter in these letters seems very far from the person who, just a few years earlier, had attempted suicide with her mother’s sleeping pills; and perhaps even farther from the person who, a few years later, gassed herself in her London kitchen. Above all, we see Plath on the move… She comes off, most often, as a whirlwind… it’s the alertness to daily life that makes Plath’s letters most poignant. Few writers have been as intensely attentive to quotidian details as Plath was, or understood so intuitively what to preserve in their art. A detail appears, uneventful on its face, first in a journal or a drawing, then in a letter, sometimes more than one. Her mind was brilliantly off-kilter, its emphasis falling in surprising places.

The New Yorker

Here is the more or less abrupt shedding, in extremis, of the “stiff,” “artificial” voice that infected her early poems and stories and from which she had been working to free herself for many years. The book provides, in the end, an account of an ordinary anguish out of which Plath produced something extraordinary.

Harper's Magazine