J O N K E R S R A R E B O O K S
“I’m sure you’ll win this; I feel very queer about it”
91. Typed Letter Signed, To Ted Hughes PLATH, Sylvia
“friday morning october 19” [19 October 1956]. An extraordinary, long letter from Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes, an- nouncing her discovery of the poetry competition that would make his name. Six sides of Newnham College letter paper (three sheets, folded horizontally, approximately 1,500 words), signed “your own love wife, sylvia” with a ten line autograph postscript. During the letter Plath is recording the events of the previous evening’s trip to a sherry reception at the Union. She was impressed by the venue “white plaster and dark beams, very fine inner room”, and spoke to “various vintage toothy englishwomen” before being confronted by a wave of American students she had previously met but couldn’t remember, “I managed my usual story of being a cretin about remembering names and places”. Plath records in a revealing passage how her development of a writer has changed her approach to social life: “all the time some machiavellian little part of me was sitting in a corner scribbling notes and laughing and laugh- ing; it is so strange now, to me---my social self is no longer all of me thrown out on a long leash and sniffing about enthusiastically---it is seated way deep down and doesn’t give itself or commit itself, but watches and notes, and manages this other part which talks and gestures”.
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