'HER BREATHING HOLE IN THE ICE'

PLATH (SYLVIA, 1932-1962, American poet) and HUGHES (TED, 1930-1998, poet) THEIR COPY OF WRITERS' AND ARTISTS' YEAR BOOK 1957, INSCRIBED BY SYLVIA PLATH IN THEIR JOINT NAMES AND ANNOTATED BY HER IN NUMEROUS PLACES, inscribed on page 2 by her 'Ted & Sylvia Hughes Cambridge 1957' (a rare usage, dating from the second year of their marriage) with a loosely inserted page of autograph notes on a number of women's magazines (those she refers to as 'slicks' in her journals and letters), including the name, address and number of words required for articles or stories, and with annotations on c. 80 other pages (often more than one note per page) ranging from brackets round entries, underlinings, lines scored in or down margins, to verbal notations, in the sections on 'Journals and Magazines' (under Glamour she has underlined 'Love stories of all types' and under The London Magazine 'Illustrations: line drawings of London'), 'American Journals and Magazines' (under Atlantic Monthly she underlined 'Deals promptly with MSS'), 'British and Irish Publishers' (under Faber she underlined the names of T.S. Eliot and Charles Monteith), 'American Publishers', 'Leading American Literary Agents', 'British Press-cutting Agencies', 'Societies of Interest to Authors', 'Literary Prizes and Awards' ('Sylvia: Cheltenham Poetry 1st Prize £75', next to the Guinness Poetry Award 'First Prize to Ted: Sept. 1, 1958', next to The Somerset Maugham Trust Fund 'Awarded to Ted: March 24, 1950 £500', under Nobel Prize she underlined '£14,000 each'), 'Broadcasting and Television', 'An Outline of the Law of Libel' (her underlinings are interesting in view of the subsequent history of The Bell Jar), 'The Writer and Income Tax Liability' (she underlined the section applicable to American citizens), 'Preparation and Submission of Manuscripts', 'Sizes of Books', and 'Pen-names and Pseudonyms' (she underlined the names of Elizabeth Bowen and others), original cloth, dust-jacket a little worn, Adam and Charles Black, London, octavo, 1957

A significant association item, which, Ted Hughes said, she lived by; that it represented a life line for her; it was 'her breathing hole in the ice'.

One of the most important practical contributions Sylvia Plath brought to her relationship with Ted Hughes in terms of both of their literary careers was her diligent and business-like pursuit of publishers and publications, habitually keeping twenty or so manuscripts by each of them in circulation all the time. A record of the magazines she approached is preserved at Smith College and there are innumerable references to these approaches in Letters Home. A four-page letter by Sylvia Plath written in 1956 to Peter Davison, then at the Atlantic Monthly Press, referred to by Ann Stevenson (Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath, 1989, p. 96), begging him to advise them about publishers and agents in America reveals the need that the present volume fulfilled.

Their friend Lucas Myers records the importance of Sylvia's attention to publication, for which she combed this copy of Writers' and Artists' Year Book: 'Sylvia always had Ted's poems, like her own, meticulously typed and out at English and American magazines. A number, both of his and hers, were being published, and those that weren't accepted the first time went right out again. It was Sylvia who got Ted's first book, The Hawk in the Rain, to the Harper contest, which it won, making his name. I don't think Ted would have heard of the Harper prize on his own.'

'...the spooky chemistry / Of opportunity, of boom and bust / In the optic nerve of editors...' (Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters)

£4,850