PLATH, Sylvia.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Typed letter signed, to Ted Hughes. A lucid, longing letter from Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes, reflecting on her anguish at being apart from him, and outlining two short stories she is working on, "The Wishing-Box" and "Invisible Man", which mark an important stage in her development as a prose writer. In the letter, Plath offers Hughes her thoughts on her own writing, as she reflects on the parallels between her characters and herself and Hughes, and recognizes her particular literary talents for psychological description and black humour.The couple had been together consistently since their marriage in June 1956, and Hughes's search for work in London that October forced the couple to live separately for the first time. Plath, still in Cambridge, begins the letter describing her feelings of isolation there: "O my darling Teddy... How I live for your letters; such queer things are happening to me; I feel that in myself I am observing the progress of a deadly disease never before recorded". Her dependence on Hughes is starkly underlined: "I think if anything ever happened to you, I would really kill myself... I shall never leave your side a day in my life after exams". At the time of the letter's composition, Plath had been living apart from Hughes for just ten days, but the strain was already taking a toll on her psychological state. It affected her writing, in both clarifying and distortive ways: "I must say that I have a growing feeling, perhaps also delusive, of a new prowe

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.