Published posthumously in 1965, Ariel is the book in which Sylvia Plath’s poetry becomes unmistakably, violently its own thing.
The poems move through marriage, motherhood, the body, illness, death, rage, eroticism and rebirth, but their real force is linguistic: compressed images, strange sonic violence, abrupt tonal shifts, and metaphors that seem to mutate while you are still reading them. Poems such as “Lady Lazarus”, “Daddy”, “Tulips”, “Ariel” and “Edge” have become almost over-familiar culturally, which can obscure how formally odd and technically controlled the collection remains.
This is the Ted Hughes-arranged posthumous text rather than the later Restored Edition based on Plath’s intended manuscript order. That editorial history matters: Ariel exists in two substantially different architectures, and this version is itself an important object in the history of Plath’s reception. It is still the edition through which generations encountered the book.
A particularly lovely Faber production, this 2010 “Poetry Firsts” hardback reproduces the collection in a compact illustrated format, with patterned endpapers and pictorial boards.
Faber and Faber, London, 2010. Special Poetry Firsts edition; Ariel originally published by Faber in 1965. Hardback with illustrated paper-covered boards and decorative endpapers; issued without dust jacket. ISBN 9780571259311. Minor shelf wear and light rubbing to boards and extremities; slight bumping at corners. Interior clean and binding sound.
