Comprehensive information and links about Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Most famous as a poet, Plath is also known for her semi-autobiographical novel detailing her struggle with clinical depression and social repression. Since her suicide, Sylvia Plath has risen to iconic status and is considered to be one of the best poets of her generation.

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Life

Born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts (a section of Boston) to a German father and an Austrian-American mother, Plath showed early promise, publishing her first poem at the age of 8. Her father, Otto, a college professor and noted authority on the subject of bees, died of an embolism following surgery (complications from undiagnosed diabetes) around the same time, on October 5, 1940. It is thought that Plath never fully recovered from the loss of her father. She continued to try to publish poems and short stories in American magazines, and achieved marginal success.

Sylvia suffered from severe bipolar disorder throughout her adult life. She had entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1950, but in her junior year she made the first of her suicide attempts. She later depicted her breakdown through the summer and winter of 1953 in the semi-autobiographical novel, . She was committed to a mental institution (McLean Hospital), and seemed to make an acceptable recovery, graduating from Smith summa cum laude in 1955.

Plath earned a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Cambridge, where she continued writing poetry, occasionally publishing her work in the student newspaper . At Cambridge she met English poet Ted Hughes. They were married on June 16, 1956 with Plath's mother in attendance. Plath and Hughes spent from July 1957 to October 1959 living and working in the United States. Plath taught at Smith. They then moved to Boston where Plath sat in on seminars with Robert Lowell. This course was to have a profound influence on her work. Also attending the seminars was Anne Sexton. At this time Plath and Hughes also met, for the first time, W. S. Merwin, who admired their work and remained a lifelong friend. On hearing that Plath was pregnant, they moved back to the United Kingdom.

She and Hughes lived in London for a while and then settled in Court Green, North Tawton, a small market town in Mid Devon. She published her first collection of poetry, , in England in 1960. In February 1961 she suffered a miscarriage. A number of poems refer to this event. The marriage met with difficulties and they were separated less than two years after the birth of their first child. Their separation was mainly due to her mental illness, and the affair that Hughes had with a fellow poet's wife Assia Wevill.

Plath returned to London with their children, Frieda and Nicholas. She rented a flat in a house where W. B. Yeats once lived; Plath was extremely pleased with this and considered it a good omen. The winter of 19621963 was very harsh and perhaps the second worst of the century. On February 11, 1963, ill and depressed, Sylvia placed a tea-towel in the gas-oven, turned on the coal gas, and waited. Plath laid out cookies and milk for her children, who slept above on the second floor, and sealed the door of the kitchen. The new nanny arrived but couldn't raise Plath's neighbour in the flat below (he was under the effect of the gas). The children were found freezing,and crying out of the open windows. Probably Plath's last poem deals with the effects of killing her children - "each dead child coiled, a white serpent, one at each little pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded Them back into her as petals....") She is buried in the churchyard at Heptonstall, West Yorkshire. Her death was not only a tragedy for her young children, but one that her husband and family never recovered from. Rumours of Sylvia's later poverty have been disputed by latter books, particularly Anne Stevenson's Bitter Fame. However, the neutrality of this biography is disputed, and it remains difficult (perhaps impossible) to discover the truth behind many aspects of Plath and Hughes' relationship.

Works

Hughes became the executor of Plath’s personal and literary estates. This is controversial, as it is uncertain whether or not Plath had begun divorce proceedings before her death: if she had, Hughes' inheritance of the Plath estate would have been disputed. In letters to Aurelia Plath and Richard Murphy, Plath writes that she was applying for a divorce. However, Hughes has said in a letter to that Plath did not seriously consider divorce, and claims they were talking about a future together right up until her death.

He is understood to have destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their time together. (His papers, archived at the university of Columbia, may yet prove differently.) In 1982, Plath became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously (for ).

Many critics, often feminist, accused Hughes of attempting to control the publications for his own ends, although he denied this. Examples usually cited are his censoring of parts of her Journals, and his editing of Ariel. This editing involved removing several poems, and rearranging the order in which the works appeared. Some critics have argued this prevented what was intended to be a more uplifting beginning and ending of Ariel, and that the poems removed were the ones most readily identified as being about Hughes. He also cut a deal with Plath's mother Aurelia when she tried to block publication of her daughter's more controversial works in the United States. In his last collection, , Hughes broke his silence about Plath. The cover artwork was done by Frieda. While critics initially responded favorably to Plath's first book, , it has also been described as conventional and lacking the drama of her later works. The extent of Hughes' influence has been a topic of great debate. Plath's poems are in her own voice and the similarities between the two poets' works are slight.

The poems in mark a departure from her earlier work into a more confessional area of poetry. It is likely the teachings of Lowell played a part in this shift. The impact of . Plath's work has been associated with Anne Sexton. Despite criticism and biographies published after her death, the debate about Plath's work resembles a struggle between readers who side with her and readers who side with Hughes. An indication of the level of bitterness that some people have directed at Hughes can be seen in the history of people chiseling the word Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (1977) (the UK edition contains two stories the US edition does not)A number of 'limited edition' works were published by specialist publishers, often with very small print runs.Sylvia Plath on Poets.org Biography, poems, related essays and links from the Academy of American Poets