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marking their first separation since their marriage. They had met earlier in the year, on 25th February, at a party to celebrate the inaugural issue of Saint Botolph’s Review, a Cambridge poetry journal edited by David Ross, to which Hughes was a co-founder and principal contributor. Four months later they were married, and they spent the summer in Spain, France and Yorkshire. Come autumn, Plath had to return to her final year at Cambridge, while Hughes remained in Heptonstall, for they feared her Fulbright scholarship may be jeopardised by their marriage. They had written for much of the summer, and Plath returned to Cambridge with a renewed enthusiasm to secure places in American magazines for their poems and stories. Her excitement at receiving an acceptance letter from Henry Rago, Poetry ’s editor, was the culmination of the newly married Hugheses summer of writing together. The six accepted poems (Two Sisters Of Persephone, Metamorphosis, Wreath For A Bridal, Strumpet Song, Dream With Clam-Dig - gers, and Epitaph For Fire And Flower) appeared in issue 89 of Poetry , January 1957. The profound intensity of Plath’s longing for her new husband, even after only a day apart, is clear in her extraordinary stream of consciousness passage in the middle of the letter where all her thoughts, about stale food, vinegary wine, or tiresome college-mates all come back to Ted. The pain that is the companion of the longing is clear, and is something that swells over the following weeks and in their subsequent correspondence. An exceptional encapsulation of Plath’s early and intense love for Hughes, bound up with news of an important milestone in her poetic career. PROVENANCE: Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998); Frieda Hughes (1960-) Price: £50,000
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