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Sylvia Plath
(1932-1963)
Childhood/Growing up
Born to middle class parents Born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts Her father (a college professor and expert on
bees) died when she was eight She published her first poem when she was
eight
Childhood/Growing up (cont)
She was sensitive, intelligent, compelled toward perfection in everything she attempted
On the surface, she was a model student and daughter
Popular in school Earned straight A’s and won the “best prizes”
Childhood/Growing Up (cont)
Entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1950
By this time she already had an impressive list of publications
While at Smith she wrote over 400 poems
The beginning of her problems…
Her surface perfection was underlain by grave personal discontinuities
Some of these problems may have been caused by her father’s death when she was 8
Served as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York City during her junior year at Smith
The beginning of her problems…
She nearly succeeded in killing herself with sleeping pills the summer after returning from NYC
She later described this experience in an autobiographical novel titled The Bell Jar
She graduated from Smith summa cum laude in 1955 and won a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge, England
Adult Life
In 1956, she married the English poet Ted Hughes
In 1960, her first book of poetry, The Colossus, was published
She and Ted Hughes settled in the English country village of Devon
Less than two years after the birth of their 1st child, their marriage broke apart
Adult Life / Falling Apart
The winter of 1962-63 was one of the coldest in centuries
Sylvia, who lived in a London flat, now had 2 children, was ill, and was low on money
The hardness of her life seemed to increase her need to write, as she often worked between 4-8 a.m., before the children woke
During this time, she sometimes finished one poem per day
Adult Life / Falling Apart
These last poems were deeper, as if a powerful self had grabbed control of her
Death and psychic pain were common in these poems
On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath killed herself with cooking gas at the age of 30
Details of her death…
“She placed her head in a gas oven after completely sealing the rooms between herself and her children. She left a note for the man who lived downstairs…to call her doctor. However, rather than rising, the gas seeped through the floor and knocked Mr. Thomas out cold for several hours. An au pair girl was to arrive at nine o'clock that morning to help Plath with the care of her children. Arriving promptly at 9, the au pair could not get into the flat. It has been suggested that Plath's timing & planning of this suicide attempt was too precise, too coincidental, not to be ‘serious’ or intended…”
Publications After Her Death
Two years after her death, Ariel, a collection of some of her last poems, was published
This was followed by Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971, and The Collected Poems (edited by Ted Hughes) in 1981
Publications
Although only Colossus was published while she was alive, Plath was a prolific poet, and in addition to Ariel, Hughes published three other volumes of her work posthumously, including The Collected Poems, which was the recipient of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize. She was the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize after death.
Other information about the family:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/03/23/plath.son.suicide/index.html
Information obtained from:
http://www.sylviaplath.de/http://www.sylviaplath.info/biography.htmlhttp://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/11