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Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (Modern Classics) Paperback – October 25, 2005

by Sylvia Plath (Author)

132 customer reviews

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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When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel.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.

Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (Modern Classics)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sylvia Plath churned out her final poems at the remarkable rate of two or three a day, and Robert Lowell describes them as written by "hardly a person at all ... but one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines." Even more remarkable, she wrote them during one of the coldest, snowiest winters (1962-63) Londoners have ever known. Snowbound, without central heating, she and her two children spent much of their time sniffling, coughing, or running temperatures (In "Fever 103°" she writes, "I have been flickering, off, on, off on. / The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss."). Pipes froze, lights failed, and candles were unobtainable.

As if these physical privations weren't enough, Plath was out in the cold in another sense--her husband, Ted Hughes, had left her for another woman earlier that year. Despite all this (or perhaps because of it), the Ariel poems dazzle with their lyricism, their surprising and vivid imagery, and their wit. Rather than confining herself to her bleak surroundings, Plath draws from a wide array of experience. In "Berck-Plage," for instance, clouds are "electrifyingly-coloured sherbets, scooped from the freeze." In "The Night Dances," the poet stands crib-side, reveling in her son's own brand of do-si-do: "Such pure leaps and spirals--Surely they travel / The world forever, I shall not entirely / Sit emptied of beauties, the gift / Of your small breath..."

Though at times they present the reader with hopelessness laid bare, these poems also teem with the brightest shards of a life, confounding those who merely look for the words of a gloomy, dispassionate suicide. Plath rose each morning in the final months of her life to "that still blue, almost eternal hour before the baby's cry" and left us these words like "axes/After whose stroke the wood rings..." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Along with withholding (or allegedly destroying) one of Plath’s journals after her death in 1963, Plath’s husband, the late English poet laureate Ted Hughes, brought out a version of her second and final book of poems, Ariel, that differed from the manuscript she left on her desk. That edition—for which Hughes dropped 12 poems, added 12 composed a few months later, shifted the poems’ ordering and included an introduction by Robert Lowell—has become a classic. The present edition restores the 12 missing poems, drops the 12 added ones, and prints the manuscript in Plath’s own order, followed by a facsimile of the typescript Plath left, along with a foreword by Plath and Hughes’s daughter Frieda Hughes (Wooroloo), several hand- and typewritten drafts of the book’s title poem and notes by David Semanki. The original manuscript’s contents have been widely known since Hughes published them in the 1981 Collected Poems, but there is an undeniable thrill to reading Plath’s book as she left it—the lacerating "The Rabbit Catcher," left out of the Ted Hughes edition, comes third here, with its rhyme of "force" with "gorse," the flowers of which "had an efficiency, a great beauty,/ And were extravagant, like torture." As to whether this version is a better book, only time will tell. For now, despite Frieda Hughes’s repeated references to her father’s respect for Plath’s work, tally another shot in the Plath wars.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product details

Series: Modern Classics
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (October 25, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060732601
ISBN-13: 978-0060732608
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 132 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #150 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > United States
- #5481 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States

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Top customer reviews

Raw, heartbreaking and real.

ByLady Reader's Bookstuffon April 29, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Plath knew how to write the most beautiful yet heartbreaking words. I am still utterly obsessed with them and not sure that I will ever find anyone that can/could describe life the way that she has. Sylvia Plath's was a horrific tragedy and one that I won't soon forget.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Plath brilliantly rebels against the cultural box of a "woman's place" ...

ByKristina Marieon April 5, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (Modern Classics)
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.

0Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Love it! Great experience

BySusan Ruddon July 7, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I received this book in a timely manner. Love it! Great experience!

0CommentWas this review helpful to you?YesNo

every true fan of her writing needs this book.

ByBeDeon May 18, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

this book puts sylvia's original work in the order that she'd had it. then we see the original manuscript of what was actually found in her house, which includes edits made by her (a nice touch). we really get a glimpse into her creative process when the book has her poem 'ariel' from first draft hand-written, to last drafts. and how she describes her poetry, it gives other insight with manuscripts of her describing her poems when she was on the radio. the whole book has left me with an even greater impression i'd had about her poetry that i thought impossible. sylvia's daughter has a well-written foreword, which i highly suggest reading.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Five Stars

ByHeatheron August 23, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

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amazing (as any Plath reader might agree) but I have ...

Bybunnyon December 25, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A sleek and organized edition. The words are, of course, amazing (as any Plath reader might agree) but I have to say teh edition lacks any preliminar notes, poems-sorting disclaimer or even a proper introduction to Plath's figure. For 10 USD I was expecting a bit more.

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One of the greatest poets ever!

ByKarlon October 12, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

What can you say about one of the greatest collections of poetry by one of our greatest poets. Sure, she suffered from psychological problems which ended her life way before her time, but her language, insight into human affairs and lives has seldom been equaled in the art of poetry.

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Eye-opening and realistic.

ByCamille Ron October 19, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This book I think is truly special. It's an experience and in depth realisation into the mind of a most troubled and artistic soul. When you open it and begin reading it I find it does not come to you straight away. It takes a few readings to begin to understand and grasp the meanings of her manuscripts. I believe poetry is something extremely personal and means different things to different people. People interpret and pick up on things differently. That's the therapeutic power of poetry. Sylvias manuscript will surly offer this experience. Thought provoking and insightful.

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Most recent customer reviews

Five Stars

Great literature.

Published 1 month ago by JAMES BUCSKO

The imagery that makes it poetry is too personal, ...

The imagery that makes it poetry is too personal, too remote to touch me; however it does convey a general felling of discontent.

Published 5 months ago by Bruce Ferguson

Sylvia Plath was a great poet. These poems did what she predicted when ...

Sylvia Plath was a great poet. These poems did what she predicted when she said "they would make my name." As a poet I've been very much inspired.

Published 10 months ago by Ana M. Torres

Wonderful

Five stars, though I toyed with the idea of four since Plath has a rather blasé attitude in her use of race/ethnicity as metaphors (or something) that makes me pretty...Read more

Published 11 months ago by A. Mack

Does what it says on the tin.

Published 1 year ago by Carl Sanders

One Star

Not up to her standers

Published 1 year ago by Alan C. Keimig

Perfect Sylvia

Plath had her own way of expressing herself. She had her own rules when it came to writing poetry. Some is hard to figure out, but do read again, then again, and maybe once more,...Read more

Published 1 year ago by Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Amazing book, really enjoyed it!

Published 1 year ago by Vince

Good collection of Sylvia Plath's last poems

This is a collection of the last poems Sylvia Plath wrote before committing suicide. She left this collection n her desk, in a binder when she died.Read more

Published 1 year ago by Kimberly

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