Saint Botolph’s Review: ‘an overture to the night and the party’ where Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath first met

The British Library has acquired an annotated edition of the Saint Botolph’s Review from the estate of one of its creators, the former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, (pic left), thanks to the generous support of the Friends of the British Library. Purchased for £5500, it is one of only three copies of the review held in public institutions in the UK and the only one that contains handwritten annotations.

Alongside the acquisition of Saint Botolph’s Review, the British Library publishes a new audio CD of Sylvia Plath, pic right,  speaking as poet, interviewee and critic. The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath features previously unpublished material including all her surviving BBC broadcasts. It includes Plath reading some of her most popular poems and a rare recording of Plath and Hughes talking about their creative work, their relationship and what it’s like being married to your muse.

The first edition of the Saint Botolph’s Review was created by Hughes with his Cambridge friends and contemporaries, Lucas Myers, Daniel Huws, David Ross and Daniel Weissbort in February 1956. The magazine featured poetry and prose written by its contributors and included the first poems Hughes published under his own name (he had previously had poetry published under the pseudonyms, Daniel Hearing and Peter Crew). The magazine was named after the rectory in Cambridge where Myers lived.

It was at a party to celebrate the launch of the magazine that Hughes met Plath, as he documented in his poem, ‘St Botolph’s’, published in Birthday Letters in 1998. Ted Hughes’ archive, which the British Library acquired in 2008, has been fully catalogued and will be accessible to researchers through the Library's Reading Rooms at St Pancras from May. It contains all Hughes’ poetic drafts and notes relating to Birthday Letters from its inception through to publication. One notebook includes a longer unpublished version of the poem ‘St Botolph’s’ in which Hughes describes at length the pleasure that he and his fellow creators felt when they finished the first edition of the review.

The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath is published by the British Library on 14 April 2010, price £9.95 including VAT. The CD contains 8 recordings, duration 73 mins (ISBN 978 07123 5102 7). Sound recordings copyright of the BBC and the British Library, dates as stated in booklet.

The CD is available from the British Library Shop (tel: +44 (0)20 7412 7735 / e-mail: bl-bookshop@bl.uk and online at www.bl.uk/shop as well as other bookshops throughout the UK.

Other new releases this month from the British Library include:

The Spoken Word: Aldous Huxley - Huxley discusses diverse topics including political nationalism, the division between the arts and sciences, mystical experiences, the causes of war and the effects of drug-taking on the writing process, and talks about his novels Brave New World and Island. Spanning nearly 30 years, many of the recordings have not previously been published and offer insight into one of the most intriguing authors of the 20th century.

The Spoken Word: Aldous Huxley is published by the British Library on 14 April 2010, price £9.95 including VAT.  The CD contains 6 recordings, duration 74 mins (ISBN 978 07123 5103 4). Sound recordings copyright of the BBC and the British Library, dates as stated in booklet.



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