“YOU, DOCTOR MARTIN, WALK FROM BREAKFAST TO MADNESS”: INSCRIBED PRESENTATION COPY OF ANNE SEXTON’S FIRST BOOK OF POETRY, TO BEDLAM AND PART WAY BACK, 1960

SEXTON, Anne. To Bedlam and Part Way Back. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. Slim octavo, original half black cloth and gray paper-covered boards, original dust jacket.

First edition, presentation copy, of Sexton’s important first book of poetry, inscribed on the half-title: “For Keyo and Rich Russell, with my best wishes, Anne Sexton.”

Sexton suffered from severe depression for the majority of her adult life. “Several attempts at suicide led to intermittent institutionalization… Sexton’s therapist encouraged her to write. In 1957 Sexton joined several Boston writing groups, and she came to know such writers as Maxine Kumin, Robert Lowell, George Starbuck, and Sylvia Plath. Her poetry became central to her life, and she mastered formal techniques that gained her wide attention. In 1960 To Bedlam and Part Way Back was published to good reviews. Such poems as ‘You, Doctor Martin,’ ‘The Bells,’ and ‘The Double Image’ were often anthologized. Like such other so-called confessional poets as W.D. Snodgrass and Robert Lowell, Sexton was able to convince her readers that her poems echoed her life; not only was her poetry technically excellent, but it was meaningful to the midcentury readers who lived daily with similar kinds of fear and angst… She continued to be in psychotherapy, from which she evidently gained little solace. In October 1974, after having lunched with Maxine Kumin, Sexton asphyxiated herself with carbon monoxide in her garage in Boston… She understood the fictive impulse, the way the writer uses both fact and the imagination in creation; and, like Wallace Stevens, she saw her art as the ‘supreme fiction,’ the writer’s finest accomplishment. Much of what Sexton wrote was in no way autobiographical, despite the sense of reality it had, and thus criticisms of her writing as ‘confessional’ are misleading. She used her knowledge of the human condition— often painful, but sometimes joyous— to create poems readers could share. Her incisive metaphors, the unexpected rhythms of her verse, and her ability to grasp a range of meaning in precise words have secured Sexton’s good reputation. Though comparatively short, her writing career was successful, as was her art” (ANB). First-issue dust jacket with price of $3.00 on front flap. This copy is inscribed to Bostonians Richard H. Russell and his wife, Keyo Russell (neé Ford).

Interior fine; light toning to cloth spine, light ring-shaped mark to rear board. Light wear to extremities of dust jacket, chipping to spine ends, closed tears at flap folds, one-inch closed tear to bottom back panel. Most rare inscribed by Sexton.