Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963.
Ariel. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

Ariel contains poems selected by Plath's husband Ted Hughes, from among the many works she composed during the months before her suicide. The collection contains many of Plath's best-known poems, characterized by increasing anger, bitterness, and despair about her life.

Melva B. Guthrie Bequest

Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963.
Above the Oxbow: Selected Writings, with original wood engravings by Barry Moser. Northampton, Mass.: Catawba Press, 1985.

All of the poems in this volume were written in 1958 when Plath and her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, not far from Smith College. The title poem reflects the view from the top of Skinner Mountain, from which one can see the Connecticut River Valley.

Enid Mark is a book artist and lithographer from Wallingford, Pennsylvania. She was also a friend and classmate of Sylvia Plath at Smith College. In her series of images for About Sylvia, a fissure emerges in a pane of glass, gradually shattering out of its frame in a violent explosion. The ten poems, each by a different poet, touch on the life of Sylvia Plath and their response to her work.