Original issue featuring an article on Plath's poetic accomplishments and marriage with Ted Hughes — including the first publication of her poem "The Times are Tidy."
Very good.
Price: $750.00
"Returning from an English education with a handsome poet husband, Plath was the embodiment of MADEMOISELLE'S dreams and ambitions."
MADEMOISELLE played a key role in a number of Plath's literary turning points from the beginning of her professional career through the posthumous publication of THE BELL JAR. Best known as a lifestyle magazine that advertised itself to "smart young women," MADEMOISELLE was significant for targeting female professionals with fashion-forward and literary interests. A young Plath had been the winner of MADEMOISELLE's fiction contest in 1952 for "Sunday at the Mintons," and the next year she won a coveted spot as a "guest editor" for a summer internship — a disillusioning experience that would eventually become fictionalized in THE BELL JAR.
This 1959 issue, following a couple years after Plath married Ted Hughes, captures the complications of their "creative" marriage and Plath's sidelining next to Hughes's greater fame in this period. These tensions between the personal and professional responsibilities of the couple would be among the issues that led to their separation in 1962. Spotlighted in the "Four Young Poets" section alongside contemporaries Howard Hart and Kathleen Fraser, Plath is nevertheless depicted as a precocious housewife rather than a writer of abilities comparable to her husband's. The feature touches on her awards and achievements, but primarily uses her as the poster child for the image of an ideal working woman of the '50s: career driven and successful enough to get a good husband — but not so much that their home life is troubled. Hughes is the poet; Plath the plucky housewife.
Read more: Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.
(New York): (Street and Smith Publications), 1959. 11.25" x 8.5". Original photographic wrappers. 96 pages. Light edgewear, some chipping to spine ends and minor creasing to wrappers. Sound.
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