Victoria's Bell Jar

The artist and writer Frieda Hughes, daughter of the influential 20th-century poet Sylvia Plath, at some point in her adult life held a rare print edition of The Bell Jar, originally owned by her father Ted Hughes, and she then ‘mended’ the damage to its front cover and inside pages with a series of lively and profound sketches.

Now researchers and students can also hold this incomparable volume in their own hands, thanks to its recent acquisition by UVic Libraries.

Leading Plath scholar and archivist Peter K. Steinberg, who visits UVic this week for an afternoon public talk on Oct. 27, believes that “we will not see another poet like Plath again … her life and story and her writings are so unique as to be unrepeatable.”

This unique volume—a rare first edition of The Bell Jar, published under Plath’s nom de plume Victoria Lucas—came to Frieda Hughes following the death of her brother Nicholas in 2009, a decade after the death of their father, the former British poet laureate who had passed it to Nicholas.

The book’s front board has a large split running down the centre of the cover, a crease which carries through to the first few leaves. Hughes drew a zipper up the inside cover, then “stitched up” the adjacent leaf. She also added small sketches of a mouse and a crocodile.

Christine Walde, a UVic librarian who first caught sight of the pending sale of the one-of-a-kind volume by US rare bookseller Whitmore Rare Books on Twitter (see Steinberg’s tweet), touts it as “the Victoria copy of the ‘Victoria Lucas’ The Bell Jar.”

An auspicious provenance

“This volume adds to our extensive unique and rare holdings in many subject areas available to students, researchers and instructors for experiential learning,” says Director of Special Collections and University Archivist Lara Wilson. “It is extremely unusual to find a Lucas copy, with a dust jacket. But what makes it unique too is that it was owned by the family and includes profound marginalia added by Plath’s daughter. It’s an auspicious provenance.”

Now scholars and students can access this volume (through arrangement with special collections staff) and witness for themselves its very personal, careful treatment in the hands of Hughes—adding not only a tangible exploration of the book and textual analysis of the story within its covers, but also as an accent to the lives of both author and daughter.

An exceptional holding

UVic Special Collections and University Archives hold an extensive array of exceptional objects and rare print and archival materials ranging from Egyptian hieroglyphics and a centuries-old British genealogical roll of parchment outlining details on popes, kings and archbishops (dating from the Middles Ages to the 15th century), to digital artworks by the late artist Glenn Howarth and movie promotional material for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

The library’s most recent publication, Fronts of Modernity: The 20th-Century Collections—created by UVic Libraries’ postdoctoral fellow Matt Huculak in honour of the 50th anniversary of Special Collections and University Archives this year—portrays UVic Libraries' 20th-century holdings and explores their collective histories and origins.

The Plath acquisition benefited from the generous support of the John and Catherine Baker Endowment, McPherson Library Special Collections Endowment and the Rainer Library Endowment.

Oct. 27 event with Plath scholar

Oct. 27 would have been Plath’s 84th birthday. She died in 1963, and was the first poet to be posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

This same day, leading Plath scholar and archivist Peter K. Steinberg will give a free lecture at 4:30 p.m. in the library on the history and textual variations of The Bell Jar. “She Wants To Be Everything”: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Letters and Archives” is part of the ‘Treasures and Tea’ series at UVic Libraries Mearns Centre for Learning - McPherson Library.

Steinberg will focus this talk on Plath’s novel and two of his recent book collaborations, Letters of Sylvia Plath and These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath. For the latter presentation, Steinberg will reveal never-before-seen poems by Plath.

Steinberg maintains the oldest continuously updated website on Plath (A celebration, this is (http://www.sylviaplath.info)), as well as an info blog; has written several articles on Plath; and is the author of a 2004 biography on Plath.