jonkers rare books
“I’m sure you’ll win this; I feel very queer about it”
6. “friday morning october 19” [19 October 1956]. An extraordinary, long letter from Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes, announcing her discov- ery of the poetry competition that would make his name. Six sides of Newnham Col - lege 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 sher - ry reception at the Union, something she was not looking forward to in her previous letter. 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 laughing; 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”. Having batted off the Americans, Plath was “invited to dinner by the queerest british couple yet”. The husband worked for the British Council and had published some po- ems, and had a “strange big soft towering wife, who looks like his mother and wears no ring and has graying hair”. Their literary gossip was hugely appealing to Plath. The man was John Press, who had known Louis MacNeice in Greece, and recounted to her the marital affairs of the litera - ti, including Auden, Macneice, Spender, and Kathleen Raine, “I have never heard such a fascinating and disgusting story: they are all linked by some first, second or third wife and have simply traded off wives in the most incredible and burlesque fashion”. She sees the clear potential for drama in this and recommends Hughes use it as the basis for a new play, “this could be a terrific thing… am I giving you plots?” Having by return told them about Ted, Press offered Plath the addresses of all the lit- erary magazines in England, and told her of a book contest, “this contest is american-sponsered by harper’s and as a prize offers only publication of the book, which is the usual prize for such things and would be good auspices to get your book out under. it must be by a poet who has not yet published a book (any-
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