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Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (Modern Classics) Paperback – Illustrated, March 6, 2018
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“Made up of poems that are so original in their style and so startlingly accomplished in their confessional voice that they helped change the direction of contemporary poetry, Ariel is a masterpiece.” — New York Observer
Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it.
When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to the public, it garnered worldwide acclaim, but it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original manuscript—including handwritten notes—and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of her poem "Ariel," which provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of a beloved writer. This publication introduces a truer version of Plath's works, and will alter her legacy forever.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial Modern Classics
- Publication dateMarch 6, 2018
- Dimensions6 x 0.64 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100060732601
- ISBN-13978-0060732608
- Lexile measureNP
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“One of the most devastatingly moving and universally beloved books of poetry published in the 20th century.” — Time magazine
“It’s hard to read the original manuscript without trying to understand what Hughes was thinking when he left out certain poems and included others. She loved him. He hurt her. All of us who love her work are caught like children in that crossfire forever.” — Los Angeles Times
“Illuminating.” — New York Review of Books
“Made up of poems that are so original in their style and so startlingly accomplished in their confessional voice that they helped change the direction of contemporary poetry, Ariel is a masterpiece.” — New York Observer
“...the publication of this ‘other’ Ariel will no doubt sustain the Hughes/Plath controversy for years to come, but we can be grateful for the insights provided by this restored edition.” — Library Journal
“[Frieda] Hughes’ thoughts on her mother’s life and writing offer a calm, tender account of a life that has too often been fodder for sensationalist coverage.” — Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
“These are powerful poems, not outtakes and B sides, and if they expose Plath’s personal pain, they also enrich our sense of her state of mind at the height of her powers.” — Time magazine
“Ariel: The Restored Edition finally puts the focus back where it belongs — on Plath’s poetry.” — Village Voice
“...a poetic landmark of the decade....a coruscating book, painfully self-revelatory, brimming with a fierce, raw energy.” — The Economist
“To women who wrote, this work was galvanizing. Sylvia . . . had a fully evolved voice.” — New York Review of Books
“Frieda Hughes has had the courage to bring her mother back, not as a symbol, but as a poet. Her poems are here and will have the last word. They remain remarkable.” — New York Review of Books
“Sometimes it takes a long time for a book to reach its readers in the form the writer intended. . . . Ariel: The Restored Edition does the job, and then some.” — Seattle Times
“...one of the most important books of poetry of the 20th century...” — Slate
“It’s like a belated gift from Plath to the ‘peanut-crunching crowd’ that follows her every mood, every thought, even many years after her death.” — Buffalo News
From the Back Cover
Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it.
When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide acclaim, though it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original manuscript -- including handwritten notes -- and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of her poem "Ariel," which provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of a beloved writer. This publication introduces a truer version of Plath's works, and will no doubt alter her legacy forever.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
About the Author
Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Ariel: The Restored Edition
A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and ArrangementBy Sylvia PlathHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Sylvia PlathAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060732601
Morning Song
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's.The window squareWhitens and swallows its dull stars.And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
Continues...
Excerpted from Ariel: The Restored Editionby Sylvia Plath Copyright © 2005 by Sylvia Plath. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (March 6, 2018)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060732601
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060732608
- Lexile measure : NP
- Item Weight : 9.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.64 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #42,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #44 in Death, Grief & Loss Poetry (Books)
- #87 in Literary Criticism & Theory
- #152 in Poetry by Women
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and The Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Plath is credited with being a pioneer of the 20th-century style of writing called confessional poetry. Her poem "Daddy" is one of the best-known examples of this genre.
In 1963, Plath's semi-autobiographic novel The Bell Jar was published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas"; it was reissued in 1966 under her own name. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.
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So many readers want Plath to mean and to be so many things. Ultimately, this hagiography leads to diminishing the depth of her art to a patina of idiot wind like "feminist," "confessional," and "obsessed with her Daddy/Elektra stuff."
All of which has unfortunately kept me away from deeply reading Plath for so long. Interestingly, I came to re-read this collection (or really, in my mind, to read it now for the first time) only because I was reading and LOVING the collected poems of Ted Hughes. He was simply blowing my mind---so I read a bit about him, and though I knew he was married to Plath and a bit about the soap operatic story of his second wife, I never appreciated how much HE, this awe inspiring genius poet stood in total awe of Plath's work. If he was that impressed, I had to see what the fuss was about.
And underneath all the expectations and labels, what it's about is DAMN good poetry. The collection starts off with "Morning Song," which is the most accurate, beautiful, sad, and perfect poem I've ever read about caring for children and caring for yourself when you're caring for children. The phrase I used when describing some of the lines to my wife was "inevitable." That's the highest compliment one poet can give another---it means that she didn't get CLOSE to the "truth" of what she was trying to say...she didn't "turn a clever phrase" or tell the truth "slant." She wrote PERFECT words and lines. They HAVE TO be that way. She said it the best it can be said. Done.
Luckily for artists after her, she didn't do this ALL the time (who could?) While MANY of the poems in Ariel are inevitable, some miss. Some still hold on to Plath's earlier style in Colossus wherein she attacks the Thesaurus and pursues a sense of ambiguity to the point of producing coldness and vague, limpid lines.
But do not be put off by these cautions or by any possible cliche or negative expectations---Plath was an intensely gifted and cosmically touched poet---Ariel roars.
I paid a buck fifty for the paperback "Revised" edition (arranged by Plath's daughter Frieda in an attempt to be more faithful to her mother's arrangement, in contrast to the arrangement by Frieda's father, Ted Hughes), but this is a million dollar book.
The poetry is rich in images, with ominous visions of Nazis and death sharing the pages with bees, puking babies, and other fixtures of domesticity. Plath is playful with language, but sharp and relentless in her deconstruction of the world around her. She does not give any illusion of her life as a mother and wife being a fairy tale ending; she readily admits that suicide is on her mind. So thickly layered are each of her poems, I will gladly reread them all a dozen more times to find more juicy double meanings and commentary tucked away in the lines.
Some of my personal favorite poems were:
Lesbos -- The kitchen is not a holy ground to Sylvia. She enjoys zero time spent with another woman, possibly the mistress who took her husband away, whose grating attitude makes idle chit-chat a living hell.
The Applicant -- "First, are you our sort of person?//Do you wear//A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,//A brace or a Hook,//Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch" This poem speaks for itself.
Daddy -- Among the most well-known poems from this collection, it devilishly mixes childlike word play with black images of fascism, "The boot in the face, the brute//Brute heart of a brute like you". It reads like a scathing, adult version of Dr. Seuss. I love it.
Just get it already!
The introduction written by Plath's daughter, Freida Hughes, is especially moving. It definitely adds something interesting to the text, especially if it's not your first time reading the collection, the original version of which was arranged by Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath's ex-husband by the time she had finished "Ariel." This particular version includes the original manuscript and Plath's intended arrangement.
This collection is both praised and criticized as a revolutionary "feminist" text. Plath brilliantly rebels against the cultural box of a "woman's place" in Ariel. The speaker in Ariel is blatantly dissatisfied with the monotony of domesticity, and she blazes with desire for something "more." She is larger than life, other-worldly- she does not fit in the domestic sphere.
Of course this collection is also famous as it was finished just before her suicide. Plath writes beautifully of the internal struggle caused by mental illness. I read this collection once at 19 and bought this particular copy at 22, having just been diagnosed clinically "depressed" and prescribed anti-depressants. The second time through was extremely cathartic. Plath gives voice to the war depression wages against mind and body. This is an extremely important text; Plath's creative genius translates something I thought much too complex for words.
Top reviews from other countries

The quote printed above, supposedly from an introduction by Frieda Hughes, is in fact a blurb on the back cover. There is no introduction whatsoever to this edition, from Hughes or anyone else, as was pointed out by Mr Bennett in his review of 25 September, 2018.
I had naively presumed that since Mr Bennett's complaint was more than a year old, it referred to a different edition. It doesn't. The fact that Amazon continues to publish false information more than a year later only serves to emphasize their lack of care and attention.
The poems of Sylvia Plath are beyond any 1-to-5 star assessment. This Faber edition is perfectly adequate and good value for the money.
The one star rating is solely for this Amazon page.


Ariel, her last hurrah is an amazing collection of poetry. It contains some of her best work and some of my favourite pieces.
I love how diverse the poems are in Ariel, the perfect blend of light and dark. The poems are rich in detail, vivid and at times, haunting.
I loved all of the poems but my favourites were The Applicant, Lady Lazarus, Cut, Death & Co and Daddy. Of these Daddy is the best. Daddy may be one of the best poems ever written.

