Sylvia Plath had been dead for 32 days when the publisher of The Colossus and The Bell Jar wrote this letter to Sylvia's widower Ted Hughes. Sylvia had killed herself on February 11, 1963, crushed by circumstances
including her husband's extramarital affair. Because she left no will,
her husband was in charge of how Heinemann, Plath's British publisher, might market her books--very valuable properties now that their author was dead. Ted agreed to allow Sylvia's real name on a future printing of her novel The Bell Jar. Heinemann on March 15 outlined the deal and wanted even more.
March 15, 1963, is also the day when after 32 days without writing, phoning, or sending a telegram, Ted Hughes at last wrote to Sylvia's mother Aurelia Plath. By then Aurelia knew Ted and his girlfriend had moved into Sylvia's apartment. Ted's letter blamed Sylvia's suicide as much on Sylvia as on himself. Near the end he wrote, "I don't want ever to be forgiven." Next to this Aurelia wrote in the letter's margin, in shorthand, "You won't be!"
Sylvia had used a pen name for The Bell Jar mainly so her mother, and other people the novel spites and satirizes, would never find out Sylvia wrote it. Revealing Sylvia as the author meant Aurelia would inevitably read The Bell Jar and be shocked and hurt. Heinemann's Book Club edition of The Bell Jar says "Victoria Lucas" on its cover, but as the publisher's letter says, with Ted's permission they would announce at once that the real author had been Sylvia Plath, who died so young in such an interesting way that 4000 books would sell like hotcakes.
Later, having found this out, Aurelia shamed Ted and his sister Olwyn, agent for Sylvia's estate, into channeling the novel's royalties to Ted and Sylvia's children, a change effective in April 1965. Sylvia had left on her desk her second book of poems, Ariel, which Ted edited and let Heinemann bid on. Ariel went to a higher bidder, the publishers Faber & Faber.