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Hush-Hush Hughes Collection Rushed to Stores
Judy Quinn -- 1/26/98
Last Monday, FSG could finally tell bookstore accounts what was so special about the Ted Hughes p try collection that will be on sale starting February 17. In the collection, titled Birthday Letters, the 67-year-old British P t Laureate addresses for the first time his relationship with his late wife and p try legend Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide nearly 35 years ago. FSG, which acquired the book from British publisher Faber &Faber in October, had to keep the details of the collection under wraps until the first serial sale of the book, to the London Times, ran over the prior weekend. FSG had already taken orders of 20,000 for the book on the basis of a hint that it was a "special collection"; it expects a second printing of 15,000 to be ordered out shortly. The orders to date are over double the typical order for a Hughes collection, said FSG publicity director Jeff Seroy.
"It's one of the most famous silences broken, one of those big questions in p try, right up there with the identity of the Dark Lady [of Shakespeare's sonnets]," said Doug Dutton, owner of the Brentwood, Calif., branch of Dutton's Books. "What a wonderful -- and appropriate way -- for Hughes to break his silence." Dutton has ordered 100 copies of Birthday Letters, 80 more than he would have ordered for a typical Hughes collection. He also plans to order more of Plath's work, including Ariel and The Bell Jar (both published by HarperCollins, with the latter book rereleased in hardcover last year in a 25th anniversary edition) and at press time was looking at the critical work about Plath to reorder, all for new display purposes. "It's the right thing to do," he said, noting the Hughes collection has many "answer" p ms to Plath's.
Borders has also taken a significant stand on the book and plans to feature Birthday Letters in its Original Voices section in April during National P try Month, which qualifies it for a 30% discount.
But Louisa Solano, owner of Cambridge, Mass.-based Grolier P try shop, is refusing to take advantage what she termed the "prurient interest" in Plath and Hughes. She's ordered just the typical Hughes amount for the new collection and said she wouldn't do any joint display of their work. "There would be an uproar among our female customers," she said, a comment that paradoxically proves just how intense is the interest still in a marriage that ended tragically so long ago.
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