Author(s): Sylvia Plath

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Upon the publication of her posthumous volume of poetry, Ariel, in the mid-1960s, the author became a household name. Readers may be surprised to learn that the draft of Ariel left behind by her when she died in 1963 is different from the volume of poetry eventually published to worldwide acclaim. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, the selection and arrangement of the poems as she left them at the point of her death. In addition to the facsimile pages of her manuscript, this edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of the title poem 'Ariel', in order to offer a sense of her creative process, as well as notes the author made for the BBC about some of the manuscript's poems. In her insightful foreword to this volume the author's daughter explains the reasons for the differences between the previously published edition of Ariel as edited by her father, and her mother's original version published here. With this publication, the author's legacy and vision will be re-evaluated in the light of her original working draft.