Sylvia Plath | Autograph letter signed, to Edith & William Hughes, on their life in Boston, September 1958

Sylvia Plath

Autograph letter signed, to Edith and William Hughes ("Dear Ted's mother & dad")

the letter headed "September 18th | Happy Birthday | to you | from Sylvia" highlighted in coloured crayons and decorated with flowers, candles, and a bird, within a scroll coloured with a blue background, sending Birthday greetings to Edith Hughes, continuing with news of "Ted's wonderful prize" (the Guinness Poetry Award for 'The Thought Fox') and describing their new flat in Boston, with further decoration at the foot of the page, 1 page, folio (253 x 203mm), blue airmail stationery, [9 Willow Street, Boston, MA,] early September 1958, remains of adhesive tape, affecting signature 

"...We should write a great deal this year with such pleasant surroundings & all the time in the world..."

Plath and Hughes moved to Boston on 1 September 1958 to write full time. Whilst Hughes was rapidly establishing himself as a major new poetic voice (T.S. Eliot wrote him a personal letter of congratulation on the Guinness Award) Plath was struggling with a novel based on her time in Cambridge with the working title Falcon Yard. She was coming to realise that she did not thrive when she had nothing to structure her days but writing. By the end of September she had taken a secretarial job at the outpatient psychiatric clinic of Massachusetts General Hospital and was soon writing 'Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams', usually considered her best short story. Ted Hughes recalled their time together in Boston over several poems in Birthday Letters.

LITERATURE

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume Two, p.276