THE COLOSSUS
First US edition, association copy, of the only poetry collection published within Plath's lifetime — owned by Plath's former lover, friend, and supporter, the poet and editor Peter Davison.
Near fine in a very good plus jacket.
Price: $3,500.00
THE COLOSSUS
"She studied contemporary poetry like coastal charts before a voyage." — Peter Davison (quoted in ROUGH MAGIC)
Davison and Plath's romance played out over the spring and summer of 1955, a relationship that was in some ways a prototype for hers with Ted Hughes, one based on strong attraction, mutual interests, and literary ambition: "[Davison] was the closest [Plath] had yet come to finding a male 'double'" (Clark 357). The two had met in the winter of 1955: "[Plath] had a surprise visit from Peter Davison, an assistant editor at Harcourt, Brace. Peter was visiting Alfred Kazin, who had sent him over to cheer Sylvia up. She was impressed by Peter's pedigree: a Harvard degree, a Fulbright to Cambridge, a British poet father, and a position at a major publisher [... ] They would be dating by spring" (idib 351).
Though their relationship was relatively brief, it was intense and important. Davison met Plath's mother and was one of the handful of confidants Plath trusted to discuss her 1953 suicide attempt and institutionalization. They traveled together and Plath regularly sent him works in progress (including her unpublished Cambridge novel FALCON YARD). In an interview with biographer Paul Alexander, Davison recollected how they were on-again-off-again lovers (164); Plath ended their romantic relationship just before her trip to England in the fall of that year (and where just a few short months later she would meet Ted Hughes).
Davison would remain a supporter of both Plath and Hughes, publishing them — including some of the final poems to be accepted during Plath's lifetime — attending their readings, reviewing their books, and featuring their work in anthologies. Davison would even publish, under his own imprint at Houghton Mifflin, the Plath biography BITTER FAME by Anne Stevenson (1989); as well as his own memoir of the Boston poetry community, THE FADING SMILE: Poets in Boston from Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath (1996). In an introduction to a selection of poems from ARIEL Davison published in the August 1966 issue of ATLANTIC MONTHLY (in conjunction with that book's first appearance in the US), he incisively wrote: "[Plath] stood at the edge of the abyss of existence and looked, steadily, courageously, with holy curiosity, to the very bottom." A stupendous association.
Read more: Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath; Alexander, Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath.
The Object
First printing. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962. 8.5'' x 5.5''. Original full green cloth. In original unclipped ($4.00) blue and cream dust jacket. Typography, binding, and jacket design by Vincent Torre. Red topstain. 83, [5] pages. From the library of poet and editor Peter Davison, with his ownership signature to the front free endpaper, dated 1962. Minor spotting to rear of cloth. Toning to jacket extremities. Minor rubbing. Small chip to spine head. Overall, bright and sharp.
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