Tomorrow starting at 10am GMT, you’ll have a shot at grabbing a scrap of literary history.
The belongings of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes will be up for auction tomorrow at London’s Bonhams. The couple’s cookbooks, typewriters, drawings, and books will be sold from the personal collection of their daughter, poet and painter Frieda Hughes.
Among the items for sale:
- Plath’s high school graduation photo
- Plath’s own inscribed first edition copy of The Bell Jar
- An original poem and drawings by seven-year-old Plath, gifted to her father
- Plath’s typewriter and Hughes’s typewriter
- A drawing of Hughes by Plath, likely from their honeymoon
- Plath’s heavily annotated copy of The Joy of Cooking, including notes like “Ted likes this” on a recipe for breaded veal slices
- A set of The Lord of the Rings, inscribed by Hughes to his wife and daughter
- Plath’s library card, expired 1960
Interested buyers can attend the auction in London in person or bid by phone or online, so long as they have registered paddles.