Sylvia Plath

Biography

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 27, 1932. Plath met and married British poet Ted Hughes, although the two later split. The depressive Plath committed suicide in 1963, garnering accolades after her death for the novel The Bell Jar, and the poetry collections The Colossus and Ariel. In 1982, Plath became the first person to win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.

Early Life
Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. Sylvia Plath was a gifted and troubled poet, known for the confessional style of her work. Her interest in writing emerged at an early age, and she started out by keeping a journal. After publishing a number of works, Plath won a scholarship to Smith College in 1950.

While she was a student, Sylvia Plath spent time in New York City during the summer of 1953 working for Mademoiselle magazine as a guest editor. Soon after, Plath tried to kill herself by taking sleeping pills. She eventually recovered, having received treatment during a stay in a mental health facility. Plath returned to Smith and finished her degree in 1955.

Career
In June 1957, Plath returned to the USA, along with Hughes. In July, she began to work on a novel that she had started in Cambridge, but was soon frustrated at the slow pace of its progress. In September, she joined Smith College as a faculty member.
Unfortunately, the job left her with little time and energy for writing. This too added to her frustration and she lost the desire to write. In contrast, Ted became more successful in writing and publishing. Slowly, she began to wonder why she failed to achieve her goal but did not give up making efforts.
In the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston. Here she began working as a part time receptionist at the same psychiatric ward of Massachusetts General Hospital where she had been treated after her suicide attempt.
Around this time, her poems ‘Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor’ and ‘Nocturne’ were accepted by the prestigious and well-paying magazine,‘The New Yorker.’ While this elated her, she found it difficult to write and this pushed her to depression once more.
From early 1959, Plath decided to write in a more inward style, trying to portray her own thoughts. Sometime now, she also enrolled at the writing class conducted by Robert Lowell. Eventually she began to have her works printed in ‘Harper's, ‘The Spectator’ and the ‘Times Literary Supplement.’
Sylvia Plath is best remembered for ‘Ariel’, a book of poems published posthumously in 1965. The poems, written during the last phase of her life, shook her readers and earned her the fame she had been yearning for all her life. Today many critics describe it as the beginning of a new movement.

 In June 1959, Sylvia Plath and her husbandleft for a trip across America and Canada, visiting several places, ultimately settling at the Yaddo artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York State, in September.But Plath was pregnant with their first child at that time and so they left for England in December.
In February 1960, Plath signed a contract withthe British publisher Heinemann for the publication of her first book of poems: ‘The Colossus and Other Poems.’ It was published in October and received good, but limited review.Soon after that, Plath began writing her semi-autobiographical novel, ‘The Bell Jar.’
In February 1961, Plath's second pregnancy ended in miscarriage. She was highly disappointed and this was reflected in many of her poems, including ‘Parliament Hill Fields.’ In August 1961, she finished writing ‘The Bell Jar.’
In January 1962, she gave birth to her second child, and in July she found that Hughes was having an affair with another woman. This upset her deeply and in a fit of desperation, she burnt the only manuscript of her second novel, a sequel to ‘The Bell Jar.’
She separated from Hughes in September 1962. From the beginning of October, she began writing once more, trying to negate the pain of her separation with writing. From October 11 to November 4, she produced twenty-five poems, which were later hailed as the best in her career.
Sometime now, Hughes came back to pack up his things and before he left, he told her how he hated living with her. Though hurt, she kept on writing vigorously and from November, she began to arrange them in manuscript form. It would later be published as ‘Ariel’; but she would not live to see that.
In January 1963, her only novel ‘The Bell Jar’ was published under the pseudonym of 'Victoria Lucas.' Soon after that, she began working on another novel, ‘Double Exposure’; but her last work never saw the light of the day and its manuscript went missing sometime in 1970.