Anne Sexton : The Death Notebooks [ First Edition ]

Description

First edition first printing of the second to last book of poetry by Anne Sexton The Death Notebooks published in the year of her death

 

Sexton, Anne. The Death Notebooks. Houghton Mifflin Company : Boston. 1974. First edition, first printing.

 

Anne Sexton, Boston University Professor and winner of the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was noted for her “confessional”, disturbingly personal poems on socially unacceptable content. A classmate and contemporary of Sylvia Plath, at the time, some critics wrote off her apparently autobiographical work as “soap opera” there is a rich vein of self-aware fiction and narrative manipulation at play in Sexton’s poems that does little to soften the unfortunate biographical connection to the collection’s theme.

Suffering from what was variously reported as bipolar disorder or even “hysteria” Sexton committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in October 1974 shortly after discussing the galley proofs for her next and final authored poetry collection, The Awful Rowing Toward God. According to some accounts, she felt the poems could not be published until after her death, though her New York Times obituary states that The Death Notebooks was originally intended to be a posthumous work.

As the obituary continues, speaking to Anne Sexton ‘s importance and The Death Notebooks specifically,

They will be understood in time–not as “women’s poetry” or “confessional poetry”–but as myths that expand the human consciousness. Like all such myths, they are a big frightening. Some people would rather pretend they do not exist, or do not exist in the temple of art. But no matter: the poems go on saying themselves to us in the dark. They will not go away.

 

8vo, 98pp, blue cloth boards wit black spine, title in silver to both. Slight rubbing to fore corners. Contemporary pen ownership signature first free end paper. Pages clean. Dust jacket complete and non-price clipped. Some minor wear to hinge edges. Near fine in a very good.

 

If you like this book, you might also like this first edition of Alfred Levinson’s first poetry book Cauldron