Ariel

A near fine copy, dust jacket a little rubbed to spine with a tiny nick to top edge. An unusually handsome copy of Plath's second collection of poetry.

Sylvia Plath's second collection of poetry was first published two years after her suicide in February 1963. In the intervening years, Plath's friend and fellow poet Al Alvarez had tirelessly championed her new work, which he considered "a totally new breakthrough in modern verse". Faber published the collection in 1965 and Ariel sold an enormous 15,000 copies in its first ten months. When one reviewer wrote that some of the poems were too "shocking", Plath's widower Ted Hughes replied: "Whatever you say about them, you know they're what every poet wishes he or she could do... When poems hit so hard, surely you ought to find reasons for their impact, not argue yourself out of your bruises." Ariel is still as bruising and impressive a collection today as it was in 1965.