SYLVIA PLATH'S COPY OF JOY OF COOKING. ROMBAUER, IRMA S. 1877-1962. The Joy of Cooking. Indianap...

SYLVIA PLATH'S COPY OF JOY OF COOKING. ROMBAUER, IRMA S. 1877-1962. The Joy of Cooking. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1953. 8vo. Publisher's cloth, no dust jacket, spine perished, well-worn and well used, rear board detached, split at p 1013. Provenance: Sylvia Plath (ownership signature, dated 1954); by descent to Frieda Hughes; sold Bonhams, London, 'The Property of Frieda Hughes,' March 21, 2018, lot 360. PLATH'S HEAVILY ANNOTATED COPY OF THE JOY OF COOKING, WHICH SHE CALLS HER 'BELOVED ROMBAUER' AND 'HER FAVORITE BOOK,' with more than 250 recipes marked, techniques underlined or emphasized, and several labeled with her characteristic star — for example 'Vichyssoise or French potato soup'; 'Hot water pie crust', 'Pork chops baked in sour cream', and a two-star recipe for 'Breaded veal slices', beside which she writes 'Ted likes this.' Both in her life and in her writing, domesticity, food and cooking represented a counterpoint to Plath's radical feminism. Her copy of Joy of Cooking, heavily annotated throughout, stands as a most intimate talisman for the life and work of the poet — the annotations reflecting the numerous mentions of the work and food in her letters and journals. Although food often looms over her poetry and stories, it is in her journals and letters where it takes center stage. Amidst her vivid descriptions of food and meals, on February 27, 1957, she writes in her journal of reading The Joy of Cooking 'like a rare novel,' an echo of her 1956 short story 'The Wishing Box' (published Granta, January, 1957), where the main character Agnes begins reading ravenously during her husband's absence, 'she raced through novels, women's magazines, newspapers, and even the anecdotes in her Joy of Cooking....' Her ownership inscription is dated 1954, the year she returned to Smith College following her breakdown and suicide attempt. On July 3, 1954, she wrote to Gordon Lameyer, 'As of today, my new philosophy of life is... in times of crisis: Assume-the-Worst-But-Serve-It-With-Parsley (that last is out of my 'joy of cooking' book from the section what to do with leftovers). She went to Cambridge on a Fulbright in September 1955, where she met Ted Hughes, whom she married in June 1956 after just a few passionate months. She wrote at least three times to her mother Aurelia in the Spring of 1956, requesting that she send over the beloved cookbook ('It's the one book I really miss!'). By July 18, she writes from Alicante, Spain, on an extended honeymoon with Ted, in a long letter laced with lush culinary descriptions of using the 'blessed cookbook' to make tasty things, including 'a delicious cold potato salad last night with onions, French dressing, hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise, which we had with fried ham.' Her journals describe her using it to cook Ted his first birthday dinner of gala rabbit stew on her small single burner stove, a particularly lyrical description (Journals, August 17, 1956). This copy is still with her in 1960, as she writes of feeding the young Frieda, 'I'm going to try out some milk & egg custards & things for her... I made her a maple cream (according to Rombauer) which she enjoyed.' Much has been written of Sylvia Plath and the role of cooking in her work and life, most of it noting the centrality of her well-worn copy of The Joy of Cooking. The wear to the book, and its extensive annotation reflecting years of reading and use, underscore the intimacy of this object in Plath's life and work. A remarkable relic from one of the most important poets of the 20th-century. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing