Ariel: The Restored Edition

About this book

Ariel is Sylvia Plath's second collection of poetry. It was first released in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. The poems of Ariel, with their free-flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from Plath's earlier Colossus poems. Ted Hughes, Plath's widower and the editor of Ariel, made substantial changes to her intended plan for the collection by changing her ordering of the poems, dropping some pieces, and adding others. The first American edition was published in 1966 and included an introduction by the poet Robert Lowell. This was appropriate, since, in a BBC interview, Plath had cited Lowell's book Life Studies as having had a profound influence over the poetry she was writing in the last phase of her writing career. In the same interview, Plath also cited the poet Anne Sexton as an important influence on her writing during that time, since Sexton was also exploring some of the same dark, taboo, personal subject matter that Plath was exploring in her writing. In 2004, a new edition of Ariel was published which for the first time restored the selection and arrangement of the poems as Plath had left them. The 2004 edition also features a foreword by Frieda Hughes, the daughter of Plath and Hughes.