Ariel was published by Faber and Faber, London, on 11 March 1965, in a first printing of approximately 3,000 copies priced at 15s. The collection was edited by Ted Hughes, who altered Plath’s intended ordering — removing several poems and adding others written after the sequence she had arranged. (Plath’s original ordering was not published until 2004, as Ariel: The Restored Edition.) The book was an immediate sensation — praised with an intensity unusual for any poetry volume, let alone a posthumous debut. It transformed Plath from a promising minor poet into one of the most important voices in twentieth-century literature.
The Poems
Ariel contains the poems Plath wrote between October 1962 and February 1963 — the extraordinary burst of creativity that followed her separation from Ted Hughes. She wrote at a furious pace: often two or three poems per day, in the early morning hours before her children woke. The poems that emerged are unlike anything previously written in English — savage, controlled, darkly funny, and possessed of a rhythmic violence that feels both ecstatic and annihilating.
The title poem, “Ariel,” is a ride on a horse at dawn that becomes a ride toward death and transfiguration — “the dew that flies / Suicidal, at one with the drive / Into the red / Eye, the cauldron of morning.” “Daddy” — the collection’s most famous poem — is a savage confrontation with the dead father, using Holocaust imagery with a daring that still provokes debate. “Lady Lazarus” (“Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air”) is a performance of resurrection that reads, after Plath’s death, as unbearably prophetic.
The poems operate through extremity — of emotion, image, rhythm, and linguistic violence. They are confessional in subject matter (marriage, motherhood, mental illness, rage) but anti-confessional in technique: highly crafted, musically precise, and controlled even at their most emotionally extreme.
Publication Controversy
Hughes’s editing of Ariel has been extensively debated. He removed poems that were unflattering to him (including “The Rabbit Catcher” and “The Jailer”) and added poems from earlier in 1962. Plath had left a specific manuscript — ordered, titled, and ready for publication — that Hughes altered significantly. The feminist critique of Hughes’s editing became a central issue in Plath scholarship from the 1970s onward. The 2004 restored edition finally published Plath’s intended sequence.
Collecting Ariel
First edition (1965, Faber and Faber, London): Approximately 3,000 copies, priced at 15s.
Identification points:
- “First published in mcmlxv” on the copyright page
- Published by “Faber and Faber Limited”
- Blue cloth boards with gold spine lettering
- Dust jacket: white/cream with blue text
First edition, first printing:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $8,000–$20,000
- Near Fine in jacket: $3,000–$8,000
- Without jacket: $500–$1,500
First American edition (1966, Harper & Row):
- Fine/Fine in jacket: $1,000–$3,000
- Without jacket: $150–$400
The restored edition (2004): Collectable but not in the same range — $50–$150 for fine copies.
Signed copies: Impossible — Plath was dead before publication. Copies signed by Ted Hughes (as editor/executor): $3,000–$8,000.
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Approximately 2× for the Faber first. Sustained and growing demand from poetry collectors, Plath devotees, and feminist literature collectors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this the “real” Ariel? The 2004 restored edition publishes Plath’s intended manuscript. The 1965 Faber edition — as edited by Hughes — is a different book: different poems, different order, different arc. Both are legitimate; the 1965 edition is the one that made Plath famous and changed poetry.
Is “Daddy” about Plath’s actual father? Partly. Otto Plath died when Sylvia was eight. The poem uses him as material but transforms biography into myth — the father becomes a Nazi, a vampire, a colossus, a shoe in which the daughter has lived. The poem’s power comes from this mythic amplification, not from documentary accuracy.
Why are these poems so different from her earlier work? Between The Colossus (1960) and Ariel (1962–63), Plath’s work underwent a revolutionary transformation. The earlier poems are accomplished but controlled; the Ariel poems are possessed — faster, stranger, more violent, more rhythmically daring. The separation from Hughes, her rage, her isolation, and her imminent breakdown catalysed a creative explosion without parallel in modern poetry.