Sylvia Plath’s letters and “most personal objects” are being put up for auction this month.
The collection, brought in by Frieda Hughes the couple’s daughter, includes some of the most passionate notes Plath sent to her husband, the poet and writer Ted Hughes.
Plath, well known for her book The Bell Jar, met Hughes when they were both students at Cambridge in 1956 and they married soon after but their relationship, while passionate, was volatile and full of drama.
Plath tragically took her own life in 1963, aged just 30 years old.
One note reads: “My husband is a genius,” and was written by Plath after she read his poetry collection, The Hawk in the Rain.
In another handwritten part, Plath says: “I love you and perish to be with you and lying in bed with you and kissing you all over… I love you teddy teddy teddy teddy and how I wish I could be with you… All my love ever, your own love wife, Sylvia.”
A handmade family photo album described by Sotheby’s as a “remarkably personal record of Plath and Hughe’s married life together” is held within another lot, including witty handwritten notes by Plath on the couple’s holidays and special occasions.
Included is a photo of Ted Hughes enjoying drinks with fellow writer TS Eliot.
The photo album is expected to go for between £30,000 to £50,000 at auction.
Other lots include recipe cards from Plath’s “Gammy”, along with Hughes’s mother’s “much-coveted” recipe for Scots Porridge Oats biscuits.
Also up for auction are a Plath family bible, a deck of Tarot cards given to Plath by her husband, and a signed document from Plath giving the BBC permission to broadcast her play, Three Women.
The auction is held at Sotheby’s on the 9th of July 2021.
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