8vo. 64pp. Original publisher's blue cloth lettered in silver, with the unclipped dustwrapper. Boards slightly edge-worn, with the scuffed and marked dustwrapper – with some smoke damage and coffee-cup staining - annotated in pen to verso. Internally bright and clean, with manuscript notations on the contents page seemingly indicating date of writing for the majority of poems, and some notation marking 'NOT US', with poems underlined - which do not all subsequently appear in the US edition printed later. Loosely inserted is a leaf from a later Plath collection, with the poem 'Blackberrying' to recto and the beginning of 'The Babysitters' to verso. From the estate of Olwyn Hughes, sister and literary agent of both the author and the author's husband, recently dispersed. As with this copy, much of her library suffered smoke damage after an errant cigarette dropped by Olwyn down the back of her sofa caused a serious fire.

Compiled and published by Sylvia Plath's husband Ted Hughes after her death, Crossing the Water is a collection of poetry written predominantly in 1961-62, between her debut The Colossus (1960) and the posthumous publication of magnum opus Ariel (1965).

Olwyn Marguerite Hughes (1928-2016) was a translator, agent and literary agent & executor who had worked in Paris for NATO, Martonplay Theatre Company, and King Peter II of Yugoslavia, among others. After the death of her sister-in-law Sylvia Plath, she returned to England to assist her brother, Ted Hughes, raise his young children, though also took over the management of both his career and Plath's literary estate. While she did have some other clients as a literary agent, including Jean Rhys, much of the rest of her life was dedicated to preserving - and defending - both Plath and Hughes.