Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath
Born(1932-10-27)October 27, 1932
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedFebruary 11, 1963(1963-02-11) (aged 30)
London, England
Resting placeHeptonstall Church, England
Pen nameVictoria Lucas
Occupation
  • Poet
  • novelist
  • short story writer
LanguageEnglish
EducationSmith College
Newnham College, Cambridge
Boston University
Period1960–1963
Genre
  • Poetry
  • fiction
  • short story
Literary movementConfessional poetry
Notable works
Notable awards
Spouse
(m. 1956)
Children
Relatives
Signature
Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (/plæθ/; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour posthumously.[1]

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Cambridge, England, where she was a student at Newnham College. Plath later studied with Robert Lowell at Boston University, alongside poets Anne Sexton and George Starbuck. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands.[2] They had two children before separating in 1962.

Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and was treated multiple times with early versions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).[3] She ended her own life in 1963.

  1. ^ Kihss, Peter. "Sessions, Sylvia Plath and Updike Are Among Pulitzer Prize Winners". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 14, 2021. Retrieved March 10, 2021.
  2. ^ Kean, Danuta (April 11, 2017). "Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 15, 2020. Retrieved March 9, 2021. The letters are part of an archive amassed by feminist scholar Harriet Rosenstein seven years after the poet's death, as research for an unfinished biography.
  3. ^ Catlett, Lisa Firestone Joyce (1998). "The Treatment of Sylvia Plath". Death Studies. 22 (7): 667–692. doi:10.1080/074811898201353. ISSN 0748-1187. PMID 10342971 – via EBSCO.