New York. Harpers & Row, Publishers. 1975. First Edition. Hardcover. Book Condition: Near Fine but for stamp on exterior of pages by previous owner. Jacket Condition: Near Fine, some signs of shelf wear over time. 502pp. (ill. in b/w).

Selected & edited with commentary by Aurelia Schober Plath.
Ted Hughes poetry reprints, ©1975 Ted Hughes.

Photo reproductions by Jim Kalen.
Design by Gloria Adelson.
Front Panel: “Sylvia Plath leaving her Wellesley, Mass. home for a trip to New York”, 1954.
Endpapers: From Sylvia Plath’s personal scrapbook.

In an uncharacteristically hefty volume, this tome grants access to the private intimacy of a poet's correspondences. Plath's letters are almost more vulnerable outside the poetic mode, addressing her "Dearest sweetest mother" or detailing the successes and failures of the first meals post-op or just being funnier than you would normally associate with the poet too-often reduced to a caricature of  housewife angst. Plath emerges from these letters with a dearness and live-wire running through her life, all the time. With poems by husband Ted Hughes, a wealth of photos, and commentary by mother Aurelia Schober Plath.