Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement

by Sylvia Plath, Frieda Hughes (Foreword by)

Overview

Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it.

When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide acclaim, though it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original manuscript—including handwritten notes—and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of her poem "Ariel," which provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of a beloved writer. This publication introduces a truer version of Plath's works, and will no doubt alter her legacy forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060732592
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	11/09/2004
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Sylvia Plath (1932-63) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and studied at Smith College. In 1955 she went to Cambridge University on a Fulbright fellowship, where she met and later married Ted Hughes. She published one collection of poems in her lifetime, The Colossus (1960), and a novel, The Bell Jar (1963). Her Collected Poems, which contains her poetry written from 1956 until her death, was published in 1981 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Other posthumous publications include Ariel, her landmark publication, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962.

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

Read an Excerpt

Ariel: The Restored Edition
A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's.The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Ariel: The Restored Edition
A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement. Copyright © by Sylvia Plath. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

Like her life, Sylvia Plath's last book did not end up as she intended. When the Boston-born poet killed herself in 1963, she left behind a manuscript for Ariel, her second and final book of poems. By the time the book reached print, however, Plath's intentions had been squandered. Her husband, future British poet laureate Ted Hughes transformed the book by adding 12 poems, dropping 12 others, and reshuffling the order. This edition restores Plath's version, reinstating her original poem selections and order.

Yes, we know Ariel, but not as Plath meant it; the poems were rearranged after her death, and a few were excised. Here Ariel is restored in all its glory (with a facsimile of the original manuscript as a bonus), giving us back Plath the poet before she became an icon. (LJ 11/1/04) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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