- Title: Poet Sylvia Plath's love letters to Ted Hughes up for sale
- Date: 8th July 2021
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (JULY 8, 2021) (REUTERS) (PART MUTE) VARIOUS OF ITEMS ORIGINALLY BELONGING TO AMERICAN POET AND WRITER, SYLVIA PLATH ON DISPLAY WEDDING RINGS OF PLATH AND HER HUSBAND, ENGLISH POET TED HUGHES (SOUNDBITE) (English) SOTHEBY'S ENGLISH LITERATURE AND HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS SPECIALIST, DR GABRIEL HEATON, SAYING: "So we're very privileged to be offering a collection of material from Sylvia Plath, coming from her daughter, Frieda Hughes, including the wonderful love letters written by her to her husband and also things like their wedding rings, beautiful very poignant personal items, as well as a photography album which records their lives together from the late 50s to the early 60s and letters to their, to her in-laws, Ted Hughes' parents as well as more unusual personal items like recipe cards and even a rolling pin." ITEMS ORIGINALLY BELONGING TO PLATH ON DISPLAY/ LOVE LETTERS WRITTEN BY PLATH TO HUGHES VARIOUS OF LOVE LETTERS FROM PLATH TO HUGHES (MUTE) SOTHEBY'S EMPLOYEE LOOKING AT LETTERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) SOTHEBY'S ENGLISH LITERATURE AND HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS SPECIALIST, DR GABRIEL HEATON, SAYING: "Obviously we have published estimates for the various items so the photograph album is estimated at between £30-50,000 for example, but these are such unique items that it is very hard to predict how the bidding will go and we think that there will be very strong interest and we'll be very interested to see what the result is." VARIOUS OF SOTHEBY'S EMPLOYEE LOOKING AT PHOTO ALBUM
- Embargoed: 22nd July 2021 14:13
- Keywords: Sotheby's Sylvia Plath auction
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Arts/Culture/Entertainment,Europe
- Reuters ID: LVA001EKZEQFT
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: A trove of love letters that explore American poet Sylvia Plath's passion for her British husband, fellow poet Ted Hughes, are up for auction at Sotheby's, along with their wedding rings, family recipes and photo albums.
Plath, whose haunting poems turned the demons of her trauma into some of the most unsettling verses of modern English, killed herself in 1963 aged 30 by putting her head in a gas oven. Her young children were asleep in the flat but she had sealed their room against the gas. They were unharmed.
Plath and Hughes married in 1956 and their relationship was as tumultuous as it was passionate. Her letters to Hughes explore her agony of separation from him while she was studying at Cambridge.
"My flesh is colder than wet sod," Plath wrote. "Do you know that you have the most delicious quirked lovely mouth and your eyes crink up and you are all warm and smooth and elegantly muscled and long-striding and my god I go mad when I let myself think of you."
"Darling, you're the wildest loveliest piece of flesh walking. If little girls scream, it is only in a king of Bacchic ecstasy; the police are just jealous and want to convict such exceptional Samsonian excellence. I love you so."
The letters will be sold at Sotheby's on July 9-21. The sale comprises 55 lots and comes directly from the collection of Sylvia's daughter, Frieda Hughes.
The sale also includes a deck of Tarot cards given to Plath by Hughes for her birthday and a striking ink portrait drawn by Plath during the couple's honeymoon in Benidorm.
Hughes died in 1998.
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