[Rarebooks] FS: Original Art by Sylvia Plath done when she was a child

[Charles Agvent]

PLATH,  Sylvia. ORIGINAL ART Accomplished When Plath Was  8  and 9
Years  Old. 1941 and 1942. Three pencil drawings, executed when  Plath
was  eight and nine years old, shortly after the death of her  father,
Otto,  in  1940. It was at this young age that Plath  first  retreated
into  the worlds of both poetry and art: her first poem was  published
in  THE  BOSTON HERALD in 1941, the same year that a drawing of  hers,
of  a  plump  lady in a feathered hat, won a dollar prize  in  another
newspaper  contest. Plath has claimed that it was her mother's reading
Matthew  Arnold's "The Forsaken Merman" to her that sparked her poetic
imagination,  and  the  first  drawing here, "Mer-maid  Land,"  is  an
underwater  scene  of  a mermaid, fish and castle,  with  the  mermaid
shown  again,  larger,  on a fold-over leaf. SIGNED "Sylvia  July  20,
1941."  In 1941, Plath was flower girl at her Aunt Dorothy's  wedding;
in  1942  she performed the same role for her Uncle Frank. The  second
drawing  is  of a bride, in profile, in wedding dress, and  is  SIGNED
"Sylvia"  and  dated  "1942"  by Plath's mother,  Aurelia.  The  final
drawing,  of  a woman preparing to curtsey, is described on the  verso
by  Plath's  mother:  "Sylvia  drew this  to  illustrate  the  costume
planned  for  the Minuet Group in the Pageant given May  1942.  Sylvia
was  in  the group." Aurelia (presumably) has also written  "Keep"  on
the  front.  This  drawing  is also in pencil, but  with  the  costume
colored  in orange crayon. The first drawing is approximately 5 1/2" x
5";  the second and third each 4" x 6". The first and third show  some
foxing  (the  latter with one closed edge tear); the second some  even
acidification. Very Good and most unusual.                    $8500.00

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