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of text and adding exclamation points next to some of Thomas’s more controversial comments (see p. 5). A fascinating association copy connecting two members of the supposed “anti-Hughes axis” of Thomas, Sigmund, and Clarissa Roche (Malcolm, p. 193). Sigmund (1928–2017) and her then-hus- band David Compton, a science fiction writer, lived in a cottage in Devon not far from Plath and Hughes’s Court Green, and the cou- ples became close friends, having children of the same age. When Plath moved to London at the end of 1962, Trevor Thomas lived in the flat below. He witnessed the events leading up to and following her suicide, as well as himself suffering from the effects of the gas that seeped into his flat. Sigmund is credited in Malcolm’s Plath biography for having “persuaded [Thomas] to put his memories down on paper. At her urging, he produced a twenty-seven-page typewritten manuscript chronicling his two-month-long acquaint- ance with Plath at 23 Fitzroy Road” (ibid., p. 193). Hughes, por- trayed in a poor light in the memoir, threatened Thomas with court action. Thomas retracted the offensive suggestion that Hughes had attended a party in Plath’s flat on the night of her funeral (Sigmund has noted the location of the controversial passage, “p. 25. funeral party”, on the title page), and they settled out of court, with the remaining copies of this work destroyed as part of the settlement. Notably, Plath stayed with the “darling” Comptons the same evening she learnt of Hughes’s affair, and she remained in corre- spondence with them after her move to London in late November (Steinberg & Kukil, p. 839). In 2013 Sigmund recalled receiving “a letter from her about four days before she died in which she said she was going to compere a poetry reading at the Roundhouse, she’d been invited to be on The Critics , and she’d be back at Court Green ‘in time for my daffodils’. And she said: ‘Thank God you’re there’”. Sigmund’s annotations suggest an active reading of the work in an
attempt to understand what had occurred between that letter and Plath’s suicide. Malcolm, Janet, The Silent Woman , Vintage Books, 1995; Steinberg, Peter K., & Ka- ren V. Kukil (eds.) , The Letters of Sylvia Plath , Vol. II, Faber & Faber, Limited, 2018. £2,500 [131328]
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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