Poems by Pablo Neruda. Translated and read by W.S. Merwin. Produced by Douglas Cleverdon

[Third Programme: Future], 1960. 16 typescript sheets (title, and 15 numbered pages of poems, printed recto only). Small folio. Held by metal tab in upper left, first sheet loose, one letter corrected in black ink on p.2, some spotting to first and last sheet; signed on upper right of first sheet "Sylvia Plath, Court Green, North Tawton, Devonshire. 16 typescript sheets (title, and 15 numbered pages of poems, printed recto only). Small folio. In early 1960 they had met the poet W.S. Merwin and his wife Dido, who became close to the couple and helped Plath and Hughes find a London Flat. In the spring of 1961 Merwin gave Plath the use of his studio, and (truncated) she began work on the novel that was to become the Bell Jar, "working seven days a week from eight to one," and finishing the novel just before moving to Court Green, the house in Devon that Plath and Hughes had recently purchased, where she wrote the majority of her book Ariel, and where Hughes lived in for the rest of his life.

The transmission of Merwin's translations of Neruda's poems (all from his Residence on Earth, 1934-1945) was not aired on the Third Programme until 19 April, 1962. Merwin's lively, imagistic, translations of Neruda would not be published until 1969 in Twenty Love Poems, and his version of Neruda's Selected Poems in 1970, both published by Jonathan Cape. Provenance: Frieda Hughes; Clark, Heather, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, New York: Knopf, 2020 (Inventory #: 345639)