Sylvia Plath | Typed letter signed, to Edith & William Hughes, on the 3rd anniversary of their meeting, 26 February 1959

Sylvia Plath

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

with an amusing and lovingly detailed account of the previous night's dinner at a restaurant "on the third floor of the wharf with a fine view of the bay and ships and gulls" celebrating the third anniversary of their first meeting, describing her efforts as rug-making, and their latest publication ("Another book has some out with some of our poems in it -- mine are old ones and much changed, or left out of the book I am working on [...] The title is POETRY FROM CAMBRIDGE, 1958..."), 2 pages, folio (253 x 203mm), pink airmail paper, [9 Willow Street, Boston, MA] 26 February 1959, autograph envelope (with later shopping list on the reverse)

"...There was an oddly homespun quality about the evening as there were only about three tables of diners beside ourselves [...] and the waitress kept forgetting essential things like spoons which I would slip over and get when she'd gone out of the room, so as not to hurt her feelings. There was also a greyhaired pianist who evidently is installed there for life..."

PLATH EVOKES BOSTON IN WINTER AND HER THIRD ANNIVERSARY DINNER WITH TED HUGHES. The celebratory dinner took place after a "miserable [...] fight over nothing", as Plath recorded in her journal. However her depression had lifted somewhat. She had begun auditing Robert Lowell's creative writing class at Boston University, which brought her further into Boston's exceptional poetry scene.

LITERATURE

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume Two, pp.298-301