Typed letter signed "Sylvia".

8vo. 3 pp. on 3 single leaves. With an autograph envelope. To her parents-in-law Edith and William Hughes with updates on her and Ted Hughes's work, health, and announcing their decision to move to Boston once Plath's year-long contract with Smith College is fulfilled. In the particularly charming opening of the letter, Plath describes how much they enjoy receiving mail from Edith and William and reminisces about the Yorkshire moorland: "You have no idea how we love getting your letters: every time they come we drop what we're doing and Ted sits down & reads them aloud to me. I like hearing about every little thing from the candy melting together in the candy jars at the little shop and what kind of weather is blowing over the moors - I loved our days up at the Beacon so much that I look on it as a real home & think of Ted's big desk waiting for us to write on it. So you can imagine how I like every word about it". - Hughes was teaching English at the University of Massachusetts for a year, but was looking for a job without teaching duties in Boston, "without homework of extra preparation", to have time to write, declining offers to teach at "Amherst or Mount Holyoke" Colleges. In Boston, Plath would also concentrate on writing, hoping to "have a book written by the end of next year" - probably referring to her first poetry collection, "The Colossus", published in 1960. In the meantime, they were saving up so that they might return to Europe "in the fall of 1959", with Plath teaching at Smith College and assisting "a world-famous critic" with correcting the exams of "an advanced course in American literature": "I'll have to read all the books by Hawthorne, Melville and Henry James, but they are good, so I should enjoy it and a few hundred extra dollars will be very welcome". - Plath was just recovering from a bout of pneumonia that left her "really exhausted" and "easily tired", which was probably part of why she dreaded the start of the new semester and took the decision not to extend her contract. In a beautiful little interlude, she describes the "scenery" outside their window: "red tile rooftops and two big gray squirrels chasing each other from branch to branch of the tall bare elm trees", before moving on to relate a visit by her mother, who was content at the apartment. For the eventual return to England, Plath announces that they "must make up a whole notebook of all" stories that her parents-in-law "know and remember", with the goal of Hughes collecting "a book of Yorkshire tales". In closing, Plath describes large snow sculptures that were set up for the University of Massachusetts's Winter Carnival: "one showed a drunkard leaning against a lamppost and looking at a huge pink elephant made out of snow (I have no idea how they colored it all) which reached up to the 2nd story of the building. Another showed two giants carving out a lacy snowflake, again, twice as high as human beings. There was a great prostrate dragon of snow with St. George standing by it, and a coach with six horses and Cinderella stepping out of it: very impressive: I wish you could have seen it." - Plath's decision to turn down the opportunity to teach at Smith College for a second year earned her the disapproval of much of the faculty. That neither Plath nor Hughes were comfortable with small-town American life is obvious from the letter, and they did indeed return to England by the end of 1959. - Slightly creased, the first leaf minimally toned. - The Letters of Sylvia Plath II, 207-209.