Tarot de Marseille | Deck of cards owned by Sylvia Plath

Tarot de Marseille

Pack of 78 cards. Paris: B.P. Grimaud, n.d.

120 x 63mm, browning to a few cards, tear to valet de coupe

"We celebrated my birthday yesterday: [Ted] gave me a lovely Tarot pack of cards and a dear rhyme with it, so after the obligations of this term are over your daughter shall start her way on the road to becoming a seeress & will also learn how to do horoscopes, a very difficult art which means reviving my elementary math" (letter to Aurelia Plath, 28 October 1956).

SYLVIA PLATH'S PACK OF TAROT CARDS. Plath was introduced to the tarot and other aspects of occult lore by Ted Hughes. She wrote of her study of the tarot in one of her letters to him in October 1956 (lot 15) and this is likely to be the pack of tarot cards she was given by Hughes for her birthday on the 26th of that month. Tarot imagery informs several of her poems, most directly 'The Hanging Man'.