Sylvia Plath Overview

Sylvia Plath, one of the best-known names in American women's literature, signed her first and her last books with pseudonyms. A poet since childhood, she published her debut volume "A Winter Ship" relatively late, in 1960. After studying at Smith College... [more]

Sylvia Plath, one of the best-known names in American women's literature, signed her first and her last books with pseudonyms. A poet since childhood, she published her debut volume "A Winter Ship" relatively late, in 1960. After studying at Smith College and later at Newnham College in Cambridge (as a Fulbright Fellow), Plath met and married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956 -- it was he who encouraged her to publish. Prior to that point, her brilliant academic career (a thesis on Dostoyevsky and top honors for English) had been seriously interrupted by an early trauma: in 1953, while attending Smith, the young poet had attempted suicide. Plath's wrenching, frightful experiences in a mental hospital and her struggle toward recovery were recorded much later in her only novel, "The Bell Jar." Influenced by J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," this book was her last work, published in England under the name "Victoria Lucas." Plath wrote several volumes of poems during her lifetime, often drawing inspiration from the poetry of Theodore Roethke and from her friend Anne Sexton. Her work, though bitter and often tragic, mainfests a strange humor as well; strains of sweetness combine with a mocking irony to describe the complex relationship of the poet with her own overwhelming talent, her obsession with death, and her duel with madness. Plath and her husband lived with their two daughters for several years in the remote town of Devon, England. It was during a terrible winter in London, separated from Hughes, that Plath gave in to her lifelong battle with depression: she committed suicide in 1963. Her "Collected Poems," published posthumously, received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize. [show less]