Ariel's Gift
Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters
Published on 30. November 2015
320 pages
978-0-393-29267-1 (ISBN)
Description
"This erudite critical study...breathes new life into Plath scholarship."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
When Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters was published in 1998, it was greeted with astonishment and acclaim, immediately landing on the bestseller list. Few suspected that Hughes had been at work for a quarter of a century on this cycle of poems addressed to his first wife, Sylvia Plath. In Ariel's Gift, Erica Wagner explores the destructive relationship between these two poets through their lives and their writings. She provides a commentary to the poems in Birthday Letters, showing the events that shaped them and, crucially, showing how they draw upon Plath's own work. "Both narratively engaging and scholastically comprehensive."—Thomas Lynch, Los Angeles Times "Wagner has set the poems of Hughes's Birthday Letters in the context of his marriage to Plath with great delicacy."—Times Literary SupplementMore details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
05/2002
WW Norton & Co
€20.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Erica Wagner is the author of Gravity, a book of stories, and Ariel's Gift. She was born in New York and lives in London, where she is literary editor of The Times.
Content
- Cover
- Title
- Contents
- Introduction: The Ecstasy of Influence
- 1. "A Crush of Diamonds"
- 2. "Beautiful, Beautiful America!"
- 3. "Spain Was the Land of Your Dreams"
- 4. "That Home Was Our First Camp"
- 5. "What Happens in the Heart Simply Happens"
- 6. "Right Across America We Went Looking for You"
- 7. "I Let That Fox Cub Go"
- 8. "Then the Script Overtook Us"
- 9. "The Cave of Thunder"
- 10. "The Shock of Her Words from Nowhere"
- 11. "The Jewel You Lost Was Blue"
- List of Illustrations
- Illustrations
- References
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments
- General Index
- Index of Works by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath
- Praise for Ariel's Gift
- Copyright
