Join Faber Members for 10% off your first order.
Ariel, first published in 1965, contains many of Sylvia Plath’s best-known poems, written in an extraordinary burst of creativity just before her death in 1963. Including poems such as ‘Lady Lazarus’, ‘Edge’, ‘Daddy’ and ‘Paralytic’, it was the first of four collections to be published by Faber & Faber. Ariel is the volume on which Sylvia Plath’s reputation as one of the most original, daring and gifted poets of the twentieth century rests.
‘Since she died my mother has been dissected, analysed, reinterpreted, reinvented, fictionalized, and in some cases completely fabricated. It comes down to this: her own words describe her best, her ever-changing moods defining the way she viewed her world and the manner in which she pinned down her subjects with a merciless eye.’ – from Frieda Hughes’s introduction to Ariel
More editions of Ariel by Sylvia Plath are available. View all available editions of Sylvia Plath’s books.
Sylvia Plath (1932–63) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and studied at Smith College. In 1955 she went to Cambridge University on a Fulbright scholarship, where she met and later married Ted Hughes. She published one collection of poems in her lifetime, The Colossus (1960), and a novel, The Bell Jar (1963). Her Collected Poems, which contains her poetry written from…
Read More
Peter K. Steinberg, editor of The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath, reflects on the journey of bringing this volume into …
Our Poem of the Week is ‘You’re’ by Sylvia Plath, from her collection Ariel.
Tom Ayling selects classic Faber titles to accompany BookTok recommendations he is making on TikTok all this week.
Sylvia Plath, poet, novelist, short story writer, was born ninety years ago on 27 October, 1932.
Shirley Tucker produced her iconic cover for Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar in the 1960s, and she remembers the design …
Celebrating our 90th anniversary, Faber staff take on the tricky task of selecting their three favourite Faber books.
Faber will publish ‘Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom’, a previously unpublished story by Sylvia Plath, as part of the …
Read Peter K. Steinberg n bringing Plath to life through her correspondence in the Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol. II.
Read a fascinating essay by Karen V. Kukil, editor of The Letters of Sylvia Plath, on the rare material behind …
'Winter Words', a new, unseen poem by a 23-year-old Sylvia Plath, was written in 1955 whilst she was at Smith …
'Plath is most powerful when she explores what it means to be a woman in an unequal world - and …