![]() for the last 14 years of his life-while she was at Cambridge on scholarship in 1956, and the two married within four months. Plath met English poet Ted Hughes-who is considered one of the greatest poets of his generation and was Poet Laureate of the U.K. Sylvia Plath's husband was a famous poet, too. until 1971-but when it did, it became a surprise bestseller. The Bell Jar, with Plath rightfully named as author, didn't arrive in the U.S. The Bell Jar was published in England just a month before her death, but it was under the pen name Victoria Lucas, due to publisher concerns of getting sued for libel. In 1960, Plath published this collection of poems first in England, where she lived with her husband, to positive critical reviews (if not massive sales). Colossus is the only larger work published in Sylvia Plath's name while she was alive. After returning home to Boston, Plath spiraled into depression and survived an attempted suicide she was briefly institutionalized, but returned to school and graduated with honors. She described the experience as "pain, parties, work," and one of the book's scenes detailed an attempted rape-an event Plath's personal journals from that summer seem to corroborate. The experience marked a turning point in Plath's work and life her novel, The Bell Jar, is a thinly veiled fictionalization of her time in New York City. While at Smith College, Plath won a contest to become one of a few "guest editors" at Mademoiselle magazine during the summer of 1953. Sylvia Plath was an intern at Mademoiselle Magazine. She also won various writing prizes while in college. She had straight As, a scholarship to Smith College, and was a Fulbright scholar studying in Cambridge, England. Sylvia Plath's early life has been described as "accomplished."Īlthough Plath is most often referred to as a tragic figure, she is described as a driven high achiever in adolescence and young adulthood. Two of those brothers were Otto and Emil-her father's names. In the story, 7-year-old Max is the youngest of seven brothers. One, The It-Doesn't-Matter-Suit, tells a sweet story about Max Nix and his mustard yellow suit. AmazonĪll published posthumously, Plath had a small collection of children's stories that were found amongst her journals and papers. Illustration by Rotraut Susanne Berner, for Sylvia Plath's The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit. Sylvia Plath also wrote children's books.Īn illustration from Sylvia Plath's The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit. The bee poems, which were unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the published version of Ariel, are so different from what Plath is known for-self-destruction, casual violence-that they have often been overlooked as part of her creative canon. ![]() They are hopeful and life-affirming works that were originally intended to end her collection Ariel, but were instead posthumously displaced with the darker, more depressive poems like "Edge" and "Words" that she wrote in her final days. At the height of her creative output, the fall of 1962, she wrote a sequence of five poems, " the bee poems," in less than a week. Otto died unexpectedly of complications from late-diagnosed diabetes when Sylvia was 8, and she would grapple with that loss for the rest of her life. ![]() Otto was a huge influence on Sylvia's work-one of her most famous poems is entitled "Daddy," and it and others suggest she fell into the marry-your-father type of trope as well. Sylvia's father, Otto Plath, emigrated to the United States from Germany as a teenager, and he grew up to become a professor of entomology at Boston University and an authority on bumble bees-his 1934 book Bumblebees and Their Ways analyzed bee colonies and the power of the queen in them. ![]() Sylvia Plath's father was a prestigious bee expert, inspiring her "Bee Poems." Plath, of course, would later have poems published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's Bazaar. Sylvia Plath published her first poem at 8 years old.Įntitled "Poem," Plath's first foray into poetry was featured in the Boston Herald's children's section in 1941. But her legacy has long outgrown her untimely death: Her collections of poetry and one novel, most published posthumously, are still read, debated, and quoted reverently. ![]() Though she's considered a pioneer of the confessional poetry style, Sylvia Plath was not widely famous when she died by suicide in 1963 at age 30. ![]()
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