Plath in the making

The literary world was stunned after the discovery of three forgotten Sylvia Plath poems revealed both sexual disgust and technical immaturi...

The literary world was stunned after the discovery of three forgotten Sylvia Plath poems revealed both sexual disgust and technical immaturity, providing an embarrassing footnote to her legacy as one of the century8217;s greatest poets. According to her friends, the untitled works were so bad they should never have seen the light of day, despite their potential insights into her troubled marriage to the late Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes.

They are thought to have been composed in the late 1940s, when Plath was a teenager in Massachusetts. The discovery was made by Rick Gekoski, a London-based book dealer, on a shelf in a New York bookshop last month. The six-page pamphlet was one of a batch of 100 published in Paris in 1975. The copy he found included the original manuscript of the second of the three poems, handwritten on school exercise paper.

Trois Poemes Inedits, published by J.J. Dufour, sank without trace. It does not appear on any bibliography and was missed by scholars compiling Plath collections, saidGekoski. He suspects most of the batch was pulped after flopping with a French public unimpressed by Dufour8217;s introduction, hailing their documentary value. Gekoski, who owns R.A. Gekoski Rare Books and Manuscripts in Bloomsbury, central London, has sold the pamphlet for Acirc;pound;5,750 to a private buyer, who will keep it in Britain.

A dealer in Plath manuscripts for 15 years, he said the handwriting and style, though adolescent, was unmistakably that of the woman who went on to worldwide acclaim before committing suicide in 1963, aged 31. However, friends of Plath were horrified that the visceral treatment of sex and reproduction such as dissolving into a 8220;warm perfumed puddle8221; and 8220;soft brown feces hardening on the diapers8221; 8212; would damage her reputation.

David Sexton, a literary critic, said he was sure Ted Hughes would have wanted the poem suppressed. Al Alvarez, the poet and author who helped launch Plath8217;s career, said: 8220;I can see why she would never have dreamed of publishing it. It8217;s just adolescentpoetry and nothing like as good as other poets8217; juvenilia. It just shows that from tiny acorns mighty oaks grow. She went on to become one of the greatest writers of this century so she8217;d be appalled that this has been published.8221;

Jacqueline Rose, author of The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, said she had never heard of the works. 8220;I can8217;t wait to read it but I won8217;t comment until then.8221; Blake Morrison, the poet, said: 8220;It8217;s not one of her maturer works, but there are things about it that are Plath-like, the physicality of it, the femaleness of it. Going from seduction to diapers 8212; that8217;s something like Plath, but it doesn8217;t have the coherence of her later works.8221; The publishers Faber and Faber, representatives of Plath8217;s estate, said it was unaware of the poems but would examine them for copyright.