Sylvia Plath Biography and List of Works

American writer whose best-known poems are carefully crafted pieces noted for their personal imagery and intense focus. Plath wrote only two books before her suicide at the age of 31. Her posthumous ARIEL (1965) stunned the literary world with its power.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
(from 'Lady Lazarus', 1966)

Plath was born in Boston the daughter of German immigrant parents. Her father was a professor of biology at Boston University, and had specialized in bees. He has been characterized as authoritarian and died in 1940 when Plath was eight years old. Plath appeared to be a model student: she won prizes and scholarships. She studied at Gamaliel Bradford Senior High School (now Wellesley High School) and at the Smith College from 1950 to 1955. LETTERS HOME (1975), edited by Plath's mother, reveals a portrait of a young woman driven by hopes for the highest success, alternating with moods of deep depression.

Her first awarded story, "Sunday at the Mintons," was published in the magazine Mademoiselle 1952 while she was still at college. In 1953 Plath worked on the college editorial board of the same magazine and suffered her first mental breakdown, which led to a suicide attempt. She described this period of her life in THE BELL JAR, her autobiographical novel, which was published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in 1963. The novel takes place in New York at the height of the Cold War, during the hot summer in which the Rosenbergs were sent to the electric chair, convicted of spying for the Soviets. Against this background Plath sets the story of the breakdown and near-death of her heroine. The book is considered a powerful exploration of the restricted roles of women. With J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye it is recognised as a classic of adolescent angst.

After winning a Fulbright scholarship, Plath attended Newnham College, Cambridge (England), where in 1956 she met the poet Ted Hughes, whom she married a year later. Plath's early poetry was based on the then current styles of refined and ironic verse. Under the influence of her husband, and the work of Dylan Thomas and Gerald Manley Hopkins, she greatly developed her talents.

In 1957 Plath returned to the U.S., where she worked as a teacher of literature at the Smith College. From 1958 to 1959 she worked as a clerk in Boston and studied poetry at Robert Lowell's course. In 1959 Plath once again returned to England. Her first child, Frieda Rebecca, was born in 1960, the second, Nicholas Farrar, in 1962.In the following year appeared her well-known poems, 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Daddy', in which Plath expanded the boundaries intimate expression.

Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
(from 'Daddy', 1966)

When Ted Hughes abandoned her for Assia Wevill, Plath committed suicide in London on January 7, 1963. Tragically, Assia Wevill also killed herself in the same fashion - asphyxiation by gas fumes from a domestic oven.

Plath's gravestone is in Yorkshire. During her career as writer Plath was loosely linked to the confessional poets, a term used to describe Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton (1928-74, committed suicide), and John Berryman, among others. Her literary reputation rests mainly on her poetry, particularly the verses that she composed in the months leading up to her death. Plath has been considered a starkly honest poet, who verbalized the experience of psychological disorder and explored deeply the theme of the woman-victim in a patriarchal society.

Colossus - first published by Methuen Press in England, and by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States in 1962. The work fused personal pain and women's issues in revealing poems that would help to popularise 'confessional' poetry. At its appearance it went unnoticed. Compared to Ariel, which appeared in 1965, Colossus was more formalized. Its appearance coincided with the deteriorating of Plath's personal life. Her husband was unfaithful, she planned separation, and she was alone with two children and without money.

For further reading: The Art of Sylvia Plath, ed. by C. Newman (1970): Protean Poet by M.L. Broe (1980); Sylvia Plath by Lindsay W. Wagner-Martin (1987); Sylvia Plath by Susan Bassnett (1897); Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson (1989); The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath by Ronald Hayman (1991); Rough Magic by Paul Alexander (1991); The Haunting of Sylvia Plath by Jacqueline Rose (1991); The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm (1994); Ariel's Gift by Erica Wagner (2000).