American poet and writer (1932?1963)
Sylvia Plath
(
; October 27, 1932 ? February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of
confessional poetry
and is best known for
The Colossus and Other Poems
(1960),
Ariel
(1965), and
The Bell Jar
, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her
suicide
in 1963.
The Collected Poems
was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a
Pulitzer Prize
in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honor posthumously.
[1]
Born in
Boston
, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from
Smith College
in Massachusetts and the
University of Cambridge
, England, where she was a student at
Newnham College
. Plath later studied with
Robert Lowell
at
Boston University
, alongside poets
Anne Sexton
and
George Starbuck
. She married fellow poet
Ted Hughes
in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands.
[2]
They had two children before separating in 1962.
Plath was
clinically depressed
for most of her adult life and was treated multiple times with early versions of
electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT).
[3]
She died by suicide in 1963.
Biography
[
edit
]
Early life and education
[
edit
]
Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in
Boston
, Massachusetts.
[4]
[5]
Her mother,
Aurelia Schober Plath
(1906?1994), was the American-born daughter of Austrian immigrants,
[6]
and her father,
Otto Plath
(1885?1940), was from
Grabow
,
Germany
.
Plath's father was an
entomologist
and a professor of biology at Boston University who wrote a book about
bumblebees
in 1934.
[8]
On April 27, 1935, Plath's brother Warren was born.
[5]
In 1936 the family moved from 24 Prince Street in
Jamaica Plain
, Massachusetts, to 92 Johnson Avenue,
Winthrop, Massachusetts
.
[9]
Since 1920, Plath's maternal grandparents, the Schobers, had lived in a section of Winthrop called Point Shirley, a location mentioned in Plath's poetry.
Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Sylvia's eighth birthday,
[8]
of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated
diabetes
. He had become ill shortly after a close friend died of
lung cancer
. Comparing the similarities between his friend's symptoms and his own, Otto became convinced that he, too, had lung cancer and did not seek treatment until his diabetes had progressed too far. Raised as a
Unitarian
, Plath experienced a loss of faith after her father's death and remained ambivalent about religion throughout her life.
Her father was buried in Winthrop Cemetery in Massachusetts. A visit to her father's grave later prompted Plath to write the poem "Electra on Azalea Path".
After Otto's death, Aurelia moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road,
Wellesley, Massachusetts
, in 1942.
[8]
Plath commented in "Ocean 1212-W", one of her final works, that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle?beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth".
[5]
[11]
Plath published her first poem at the age of eight in the
Boston Herald
'
s children's section.
Over the next few years, Plath published multiple poems in regional magazines and newspapers.
[13]
At age 11, Plath began keeping a journal.
[13]
In addition to writing, she showed early promise as an artist, winning an award for her paintings from the
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards
in 1947.
"Even in her youth, Plath was ambitiously driven to succeed."
[13]
Plath attended Bradford Senior High School, which is now
Wellesley High School
in
Wellesley, Massachusetts
, graduating in 1950.
[5]
Just after graduating from high school, she had her first national publication in
The Christian Science Monitor
.
[13]
College years and depression
[
edit
]
In 1950, Plath attended
Smith College
, a private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she excelled academically. While at Smith, she lived in Lawrence House, and a plaque can be found outside her old room. She edited
The Smith Review.
After her third year of college, Plath was awarded a coveted position as a guest editor at
Mademoiselle
magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City.
[5]
The experience was not what she had hoped for, and many of the events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel
The Bell Jar
.
[15]
She was furious at not being at a meeting that the editor,
Cyrilly Abels
, had arranged with Welsh poet
Dylan Thomas
, a writer whose work she loved, according to one of her boyfriends, "more than life itself". She loitered around the
White Horse Tavern
and the
Chelsea Hotel
for two days, hoping to meet Thomas, but he was already on his way home. A few weeks later, she slashed her legs "to see if she had enough courage to kill herself."
[a]
During this time, she was not accepted into a
Harvard University
writing seminar with author
Frank O'Connor
.
[5]
Following
ECT
for depression, Plath made her first medically documented suicide attempt on August 24, 1953,
[18]
by crawling under the front porch and taking her mother's sleeping pills.
She survived this first suicide attempt, later writing that she "blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion". She spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and
insulin shock treatment
under the care of
Ruth Beuscher
.
[5]
Her stay at
McLean Hospital
and her Smith scholarship were paid for by the author
Olive Higgins Prouty
, who had also recovered from a mental breakdown.
[20]
According to Plath's biographer Andrew Wilson, Olive Higgins Prouty "would take Dr Tillotson to task for the badly managed ECT, blaming him for Sylvia's suicide attempt".
[17]
Plath seemed to make a good recovery and returned to college. In January 1955, she submitted her thesis
The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of
Dostoyevsky
's Novels
, and in June graduated from Smith with an A.B., summa cum laude.
[21]
She was a member of the
Phi Beta Kappa
academic honor society,
[15]
and had an IQ of around 160.
[23]
She obtained a
Fulbright Scholarship
to study at
Newnham College
, one of the two women-only colleges of the
University of Cambridge
in England, where she continued actively writing poetry and publishing her work in the student newspaper
Varsity
. At Newnham, she studied with
Dorothea Krook
, whom she held in high regard.
She spent her first-year winter and spring holidays traveling around Europe.
[5]
Career and marriage
[
edit
]
Plath met poet
Ted Hughes
on February 25, 1956. In a 1961
BBC
interview now held by the
British Library Sound Archive
,
[25]
Plath describes how she met Hughes:
I'd read some of Ted's poems in this magazine and I was very impressed and I wanted to meet him. I went to this little celebration and that's actually where we met... Then we saw a great deal of each other. Ted came back to Cambridge and suddenly we found ourselves getting married a few months later... We kept writing poems to each other. Then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on.
[25]
Plath described Hughes as "a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer" with "a voice like the thunder of God".
[5]
The couple married on June 16, 1956, at
St George the Martyr, Holborn
, now in the
London Borough of Camden
, with Plath's mother in attendance. They spent their honeymoon in Paris and
Benidorm
, Spain. Plath returned to Newnham in October to begin her second year.
[5]
During this time, they both became deeply interested in
astrology
and the supernatural, using
ouija
boards.
[26]
In June 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States; beginning in September, Plath taught at Smith College, her alma mater. She found it difficult to both teach and have enough time and energy to write,
[21]
and in the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston. Plath took a job as a receptionist in the psychiatric unit of
Massachusetts General Hospital
and in the evenings sat in on creative writing seminars given by poet
Robert Lowell
(also attended by the writers
Anne Sexton
and
George Starbuck
).
[21]
Both Lowell and Sexton encouraged Plath to write from her personal experience. She openly discussed her depression with Lowell and her suicide attempt with Sexton, who led her to write from a more female perspective. Plath began to consider herself as a more serious, focused writer.
[5]
At this time Plath and Hughes met the poet
W.S. Merwin
, who admired their work and was to remain a lifelong friend.
[27]
Plath resumed
psychoanalytic
treatment in December, working with Ruth Beuscher.
[5]
Plath and Hughes traveled across Canada and the United States, staying at the
Yaddo
artist colony in
Saratoga Springs
, New York, in late 1959. Plath stated that at Yaddo she learned "to be true to my own weirdnesses", but she remained anxious about writing confessionally, from deeply personal and private material.
[5]
The couple moved back to England in December 1959 and lived in London at 3
Chalcot Square
, near the Primrose Hill area of
Regent's Park
, where an
English Heritage
plaque records Plath's residence.
[29]
[30]
Their daughter
Frieda
was born on April 1, 1960, and in October, Plath published
The Colossus
, her first collection of poetry.
[29]
In February 1961, Plath's second pregnancy ended in miscarriage; several of her poems, including "Parliament Hill Fields", address this event.
In a letter to her therapist, Plath wrote that Hughes beat her two days before the miscarriage.
[32]
In August she finished her semi-autobiographical novel
The Bell Jar
; immediately afterwards, the family moved to
Court Green
in the small market town of North Tawton.
Nicholas
was born in January 1962.
[29]
In mid-1962, Plath and Hughes began to keep bees, which would be the subject of many Plath poems.
[5]
In August 1961, the couple rented their flat at Chalcot Square to
Assia (nee Gutmann) Wevill
and
David Wevill
.
[33]
Hughes was immediately struck with the beautiful Assia, as she was with him. In June 1962, Plath had a car accident, which she later described as a suicide attempt. In July 1962, Plath discovered Hughes was having an affair with Assia Wevill; in September, Plath and Hughes separated.
[29]
Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and composed most of the poems on which her reputation now rests, writing at least 26 of the poems of her posthumous collection
Ariel
during the final months of her life.
[29]
[34]
[35]
In December 1962, she returned alone to London with their children and rented, on a five-year lease, a flat at 23 Fitzroy Road?only a few streets from the Chalcot Square flat.
William Butler Yeats
once lived in the house, which bears an English Heritage
blue plaque
for the Irish poet. Plath was pleased by this fact and considered it a good omen.
The northern winter of 1962?1963 was one of the coldest in 100 years; the pipes froze, the children?now two years old and nine months?were often sick, and the house had no telephone.
[36]
Her depression returned but she completed the rest of her poetry collection, which would be published after her death (1965 in the UK, 1966 in the US). Her only novel,
The Bell Jar
, was published in January 1963 under the pen name Victoria Lucas and was met with critical indifference.
[37]
Final depressive episode and death
[
edit
]
Before her death, Plath tried at least twice to take her own life.
[38]
On August 24, 1953, she overdosed on sleeping pills;
[39]
then, in June 1962, she drove her car off the side of the road into a river, which she later characterized as a suicide attempt.
[40]
In January 1963, Plath spoke with
John Horder
, her general practitioner. She described the current depressive episode she was experiencing; it had been ongoing for six or seven months. While for most of the time she had been able to continue working, her depression had worsened and become severe, "marked by constant agitation, suicidal thoughts and inability to cope with daily life". Plath struggled with insomnia, taking medication at night to induce sleep, and frequently woke up early.
[38]
She had lost 20 pounds (9 kg) in a short time.
[38]
However, she continued to take care of her physical appearance and did not outwardly speak of feeling guilty or unworthy.
[38]
Horder prescribed her an anti-depressant, a
monoamine oxidase inhibitor
,
[38]
a few days before her suicide. Knowing she was at risk with two young children, he made strenuous efforts to have her admitted to a hospital; when that failed, he arranged for a live-in nurse.
[38]
Hughes claimed in a hand-written note to the literary critic Keith Sagar, discovered in 2001, that the anti-depressants prescribed were a "key factor" in Plath's suicide. He said Plath had previously had an adverse reaction to a prescription she had taken when they lived in the U.S. These pills were sold in England under a different name, and although Hughes did not name the pills explicitly, he claimed a new doctor had prescribed them to Plath without realizing she had taken them before with adverse effects.
[41]
Several commentators have argued that because anti-depressants may take up to three weeks to take effect, her prescription from Horder would not have taken full effect prior to her death; however, others have pointed out that adverse effects of anti-depressants can begin immediately.
[42]
The live-in nurse was due to arrive at nine on the morning of February 11, 1963, to help Plath with the care of her children. Upon arrival, she could not get into the flat but eventually gained access with the help of a workman. They found Plath dead with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels and cloths.
She was 30
years old.
[44]
Plath's intentions have been debated. That morning, she asked her downstairs neighbor, art historian Trevor Thomas (1907–1993), what time he would be leaving. She also left a note reading "Call Dr. Horder", including the doctor's phone number. It is argued Plath turned on the gas at a time when Thomas would have been likely to see the note, but the escaping gas seeped downstairs and also rendered Thomas unconscious while he slept.
However, in her biography
Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath
, Plath's friend
Jillian Becker
wrote, "According to Mr. Goodchild, a police officer attached to the coroner's office... [Plath] had thrust her head far into the gas oven... [and] had really meant to die."
[46]
Horder also believed her intention was clear. He stated that "No one who saw the care with which the kitchen was prepared could have interpreted her action as anything but an irrational compulsion."
[44]
Plath had described the quality of her despair as "owl's talons clenching my heart".
[47]
In his 1972 book on suicide,
The Savage God
, friend and critic
Al Alvarez
claimed that Plath's suicide was an unanswered cry for help.
[44]
In a BBC interview in March 2000, Alvarez spoke about his failure to recognize Plath's depression, saying he regretted his inability to offer her emotional support: "I failed her on that level. I was thirty years old and stupid. What did I know about chronic clinical depression?... [S]he kind of needed someone to take care of her. And that was not something I could do."
[48]
Following Plath's death
[
edit
]
An inquest was held on February 15 and concluded that the cause of death was
suicide
by
carbon monoxide poisoning
.
Hughes was devastated; they had been separated for six months, due to his affair with Assia Wevill. In a letter to an old friend of Plath's from Smith College, he wrote: "That's the end of my life. The rest is posthumous."
[36]
[50]
Wevill also died by suicide, using a gas stove, six years later.
Plath's gravestone in
Heptonstall
's parish churchyard of St. Thomas the Apostle bears the inscription that Hughes chose for her:
[51]
"Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted." Biographers have attributed the source of the quote either to the Hindu text
The Bhagavad Gita
[51]
or to the 16th-century Buddhist novel
Journey to the West
written by
Wu Cheng'en
.
[52]
[53]
Plath's daughter
Frieda Hughes
is a writer and artist. On March 16, 2009, Plath's son
Nicholas Hughes
died by suicide at his home in Fairbanks, Alaska, following a history of depression.
[54]
[55]
Works
[
edit
]
Plath wrote poetry from the age of 8, her first poem appearing in the
Boston Traveller
.
[5]
By the time she arrived at Smith College, she had written over 50 short stories, and her work had been published in numerous magazines.
[56]
At Smith, she majored in English literature and won all the major prizes in writing and scholarship, including literary prizes for her poetry. Additionally, she received a summer editor position at the young women's magazine
Mademoiselle
.
[5]
On her graduation in 1955, she won the
Glascock Prize
for "
Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea
". Later, at Cambridge, she wrote for the university publication
Varsity
.
[57]
The Colossus
[
edit
]
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,
Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.
from "The Colossus",
The Colossus and Other Poems
, 1960
By the time
Heinemann
published her first collection,
The Colossus and Other Poems
in the UK in late 1960, Plath had been short-listed several times in the
Yale Younger Poets
book competition and had her work printed in
Harper's
,
The Spectator
and
The Times Literary Supplement
. All the poems in
The Colossus
had been printed in major U.S. and British journals, and she had a contract with
The New Yorker
.
[58]
It was, however, her 1965 collection
Ariel
, published posthumously, on which Plath's reputation essentially rests. "Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme."
[13]
The Colossus
received largely positive UK reviews, highlighting Plath's voice as new and strong, individual and American in tone.
Peter Dickinson
at
Punch
called the collection "a real find" and "exhilarating to read", full of "clean, easy verse".
[58]
Bernard Bergonzi
at the
Manchester Guardian
wrote the book was an "outstanding technical accomplishment" with a "virtuoso quality".
[58]
From the point of publication, she became a presence on the poetry scene. The book was published in America in 1962 to less-glowing reviews. While her craft was generally praised, her writing was viewed by some critics at the time as more derivative of other poets.
[58]
The Bell Jar
[
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]
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked [...] as I sat there, unable to decide [which fig], the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
The Bell Jar
, 1963
Plath's semi-autobiographical novel—her mother wanted to block publication—was published in 1963 and in the US in 1971.
[37]
Describing the compilation of the book to her mother, she wrote, "What I've done is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalising to add color—it's a
pot boiler
really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown... I've tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar".
[60]
She described her novel as "an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past".
[61]
Plath dated a Yale senior named Dick Norton during her junior year. Norton, upon whom the character of Buddy in
The Bell Jar
is based, contracted tuberculosis and was treated at the
Ray Brook Sanatorium
. While visiting Norton, Plath broke her leg skiing, an incident that was fictionalized in the novel.
Plath also used the novel to highlight the issue of women in the workforce during the 1950s. She strongly believed in women's abilities to be writers and editors while society forced them to fulfill secretarial roles:
[63]
Now with me, writing is the first delight in life. I want time and money to write, both very necessary. I will not sacrifice my time to learn shorthand because I do not want any of the jobs which shorthand would open up, although those jobs are no doubt very interesting for girls who want them. I do not want the rigid hours of a magazine or publishing job. I do not want to type other people's letters and read their manuscripts. I want to type my own and write my own. So secretarial training is out for me. That I know. (Sylvia Plath's letter to her mother, 10 Feb 1955)
Double Exposure
[
edit
]
In 1963, after
The Bell Jar
was published, Plath began working on another literary work, titled
Double Exposure
, which was never published.
According to Ted Hughes in 1979, Plath left behind a typescript of "some 130 pages",
[65]
but in 1995 he spoke of just "sixty, seventy pages".
[66]
Olwyn Hughes wrote in 2003 that the typescript may have consisted of the first two chapters, and did not exceed sixty pages.
[67]
Ariel
[
edit
]
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
from the poem "
Ariel
", October 12, 1962
[68]
The posthumous publication of
Ariel
in 1965 precipitated Plath's rise to fame.
[5]
The poems in
Ariel
mark a departure from her earlier work into a more personal arena of poetry.
Robert Lowell
's poetry may have played a part in this shift as she cited Lowell's 1959 book
Life Studies
as a significant influence, in an interview just before her death.
[69]
The impact of
Ariel
was dramatic, with its dark and potentially autobiographical descriptions of mental illness in poems such as "
Tulips
", "
Daddy
" and "
Lady Lazarus
".
[69]
Plath's work is often held within the genre of
confessional poetry
and the style of her work compared to other contemporaries, such as Lowell and
W.D. Snodgrass
. Plath's close friend
Al Alvarez
, who wrote about her extensively, said of her later work: "Plath's case is complicated by the fact that, in her mature work, she deliberately used the details of her everyday life as raw material for her art. A casual visitor or unexpected telephone call, a cut, a bruise, a kitchen bowl, a candlestick?everything became usable, charged with meaning, transformed. Her poems are full of references and images that seem impenetrable at this distance, but which could mostly be explained in footnotes by a scholar with full access to the details of her life."
Many of Plath's later poems deal with what one critic calls the "domestic surreal" in which Plath takes everyday elements of life and twists the images, giving them an almost nightmarish quality. Plath's poem "Morning Song" from
Ariel
is regarded as one of her finest poems on
freedom of expression
of an artist.
[71]
Plath's fellow confessional poet and friend
Anne Sexton
commented: "Sylvia and I would talk at length about our first suicide, in detail and in depth?between the free potato chips. Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem. Sylvia and I often talked opposites. We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric lightbulb, sucking on it. She told the story of her first suicide in sweet and loving detail, and her description in
The Bell Jar
is just that same story."
[72]
The confessional interpretation of Plath's work has led to some dismissing certain aspects of her work as an exposition of sentimentalist melodrama; in 2010, for example,
Theodore Dalrymple
asserted that Plath had been the "patron saint of self-dramatisation" and of self-pity.
Revisionist critics such as Tracy Brain have, however, argued against a tightly autobiographical interpretation of Plath's material.
[74]
On January 16, 2004, The Independent newspaper in London published an article that ranked
Ariel
as the 3rd best book of modern poetry among 'The 10 Best Modern Poetry Books.'
Other works
[
edit
]
In 1971, the volumes
Winter Trees
and
Crossing the Water
were published in the UK, including nine previously unseen poems from the original manuscript of
Ariel
.
[37]
Writing in
New Statesman
, fellow poet
Peter Porter
wrote:
Crossing the Water
is full of perfectly realised works. Its most striking impression is of a front-rank artist in the process of discovering her true power. Such is Plath's control that the book possesses a singularity and certainty which should make it as celebrated as
The Colossus
or
Ariel
.
[75]
The
Collected Poems
, published in 1981, edited and introduced by Ted Hughes, contained poetry written from 1956 until her death. Plath posthumously was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
.
[37]
In 2006,
Anna Journey
, then a graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University, discovered a previously unpublished sonnet written by Plath titled
"Ennui"
. The poem, composed during Plath's early years at Smith College, was published in the online journal
Blackbird
.
[76]
[b]
Journals and letters
[
edit
]
Plath's letters were published in 1975, edited and selected by her mother
Aurelia Plath
. The collection
Letters Home: Correspondence 1950?1963
came out partly in response to the strong public reaction to the publication of
The Bell Jar
in America.
[37]
Plath began keeping a diary from the age of 11 and continued doing so until her suicide. Her adult diaries, starting from her first year at Smith College in 1950, were published in 1982 as
The Journals of Sylvia Plath
, edited by Frances McCullough, with Ted Hughes as consulting editor. In 1982, when Smith College acquired Plath's remaining journals, Hughes sealed two of them until February 11, 2013, the 50th anniversary of Plath's death.
[77]
During the last years of his life, Hughes began working on a fuller publication of Plath's journals. In 1998, shortly before his death, he unsealed the two journals, and passed the project onto his children by Plath, Frieda and Nicholas, who passed it on to Karen V. Kukil, who finished her editing in December 1999. In 2000
Anchor Books
published
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
.
More than half of the new volume contained newly released material;
[77]
the American author
Joyce Carol Oates
hailed the publication as a "genuine literary event". Hughes faced criticism for his role in handling the journals: He claims to have destroyed Plath's last journal, which contained entries from the winter of 1962 up to her death. In the foreword of the 1982 version, he writes "I destroyed [the last of her journals] because I did not want her children to have to read it (in those days I regarded forgetfulness as an essential part of survival)."
[5]
Hughes controversies
[
edit
]
And here you come, with a cup of tea
Wreathed in steam.
The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.
You hand me two children, two roses.
from "Kindness", written February 1, 1963.
Ariel
As Hughes and Plath were legally married at the time of her death, Hughes inherited the Plath estate, including all her written work. He has been condemned repeatedly for burning Plath's last journal, saying he "did not want her children to have to read it".
[80]
Hughes lost another journal and an unfinished novel, and instructed that a collection of Plath's papers and journals should not be released until 2013.
[80]
[81]
He has been accused of attempting to control the estate for his own ends, although royalties from Plath's poetry were placed into a trust account for their two children, Frieda and Nicholas.
Plath's gravestone has been repeatedly vandalized by those aggrieved that "Hughes" is written on the stone; they have attempted to chisel it off, leaving only the name "Sylvia Plath".
[84]
When Hughes' mistress
Assia Wevill
died by suicide and killed their four-year-old daughter Shura in 1969, this practice intensified. After each defacement, Hughes had the damaged stone removed, sometimes leaving the site unmarked during repair.
[85]
Outraged mourners accused Hughes in the media of dishonouring her name by removing the stone.
[86]
Wevill's death led to claims that Hughes had been abusive to both Plath and Wevill.
[87]
[48]
Radical feminist
poet
Robin Morgan
published the poem "Arraignment", in which she openly accused Hughes of the battery and murder of Plath. Her book
Monster
(1972) "included a piece in which a gang of Plath aficionados are imagined castrating Hughes, stuffing his penis into his mouth and then blowing out his brains".
[88]
[86]
[89]
Hughes threatened to sue Morgan. The book was withdrawn by the publisher Random House, but it remained in circulation among feminists.
[90]
Other feminists threatened to kill Hughes in Plath's name and pursue a conviction for murder.
[44]
[88]
Plath's poem "The Jailor", in which the speaker condemns her husband's brutality, was included in Morgan's 1970 anthology
Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement
.
In 1989, with Hughes under public attack, a battle raged in the letters pages of
The Guardian
and
The Independent
. In
The Guardian
on April 20, 1989, Hughes wrote the article "The Place Where Sylvia Plath Should Rest in Peace": "In the years soon after [Plath's] death, when scholars approached me, I tried to take their apparently serious concern for the truth about Sylvia Plath seriously. But I learned my lesson early...If I tried too hard to tell them exactly how something happened, in the hope of correcting some fantasy, I was quite likely to be accused of trying to suppress Free Speech. In general, my refusal to have anything to do with the Plath Fantasia has been regarded as an attempt to suppress Free Speech...The Fantasia about Sylvia Plath is more needed than the facts. Where that leaves respect for the truth of her life (and of mine), or for her memory, or for the literary tradition, I do not know."
[86]
[92]
Still the subject of speculation and opprobrium in 1998, Hughes published
Birthday Letters
that year, his own collection of 88 poems about his relationship with Plath. Hughes had published very little about his experience of the marriage and Plath's suicide, and the book caused a sensation, being taken as his first explicit disclosure, and it topped bestseller charts. It was not known at the volume's release that Hughes had terminal cancer and would die later that year. The book won the
Forward Poetry Prize
, the
T. S. Eliot Prize
for Poetry, and the
Whitbread Poetry Prize
. The poems, written after Plath's death, in some cases long after, try to find a reason why Plath took her own life.
[93]
In October 2015, the BBC Two documentary
Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death
examined Hughes' life and work; it included audio recordings of Plath reciting her own poetry. Their daughter Frieda spoke for the first time about her mother and father.
[94]
Themes and legacy
[
edit
]
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
from "Morning Song",
Ariel
, 1965
[95]
Sylvia Plath's early poems exhibit what became her typical imagery, using personal and nature-based depictions featuring, for example, the moon, blood, hospitals, fetuses, and skulls. They were mostly imitation exercises of poets she admired such as
Dylan Thomas
,
W. B. Yeats
and
Marianne Moore
.
[56]
Late in 1959, when she and Hughes were at the Yaddo writers' colony in New York State, she wrote the seven-part "Poem for a Birthday", echoing
Theodore Roethke
's
Lost Son
sequence, though its theme is her own traumatic breakdown and suicide attempt at 20. After 1960 her work moved into a more surreal landscape darkened by a sense of imprisonment and looming death, overshadowed by her father.
The Colossus
is filled with themes of death, redemption and resurrection. After Hughes left, Plath produced, in less than two months, the 40 poems of rage, despair, love, and vengeance on which her reputation mostly rests.
[56]
Plath's landscape poetry, which she wrote throughout her life, has been described as "a rich and important area of her work that is often overlooked...some of the best of which was written about the
Yorkshire moors
". Her September 1961 poem "Wuthering Heights" takes its title from the
Emily Bronte
novel, but its content and style is Plath's own particular vision of the
Pennine
landscape.
[96]
It was Plath's publication of
Ariel
in 1965 that precipitated her rise to fame and helped establish her reputation as one of the 20th century's best poets. As soon as it was published, critics began to see the collection as the charting of Plath's increasing desperation or death wish. Her dramatic death became her most famous aspect and remains so.
[5]
Time
and
Life
both reviewed the slim volume of
Ariel
in the wake of her death.
[44]
The critic at
Time
said: "Within a week of her death, intellectual London was hunched over copies of a strange and terrible poem she had written during her last sick slide toward suicide. 'Daddy' was its title; its subject was her morbid love-hatred of her father; its style was as brutal as a truncheon. What is more, 'Daddy' was merely the first jet of flame from a literary dragon who in the last months of her life breathed a burning river of bile across the literary landscape...In her most ferocious poems, 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus', fear, hate, love, death and the poet's own identity become fused at black heat with the figure of her father, and through him, with the guilt of the German exterminators and the suffering of their Jewish victims. They are poems, as
Robert Lowell
says in his preface to
Ariel
, that 'play Russian roulette with six cartridges in the cylinder'."
[97]
[c]
On January 16, 2004,
The Independent
in London published an article which ranked
Ariel
as the third best book of modern poetry among its T10 Best Modern Poetry Books.
Some in the feminist movement saw Plath as speaking for their experience, as a "symbol of blighted female genius".
[44]
Writer
Honor Moore
describes
Ariel
as marking the beginning of a movement, Plath suddenly visible as "a woman on paper", certain and audacious. Moore says: "When Sylvia Plath's
Ariel
was published in the United States in 1966, American women noticed. Not only women who ordinarily read poems, but housewives and mothers whose ambitions had awakened ... Here was a woman, superbly trained in her craft, whose final poems uncompromisingly charted female rage, ambivalence, and grief, in a voice with which many women identified."
[99]
Smith College, Plath's alma mater, holds her literary papers in the Smith College Library.
[100]
The United States Postal Service introduced a postage stamp featuring Plath in 2012.
[101]
[102]
[103]
An
English Heritage plaque
records Plath's residence at 3
Chalcot Square
, in London.
[30]
In 2018,
The New York Times
published an obituary for Plath
[104]
as part of the
Overlooked history project
.
[105]
[106]
Portrayals in media
[
edit
]
Plath's voice is heard in a BBC documentary about her life, recorded in London in late 1962.
[107]
Of the BBC recording
Elizabeth Hardwick
wrote:
I have never before learned anything from a poetic reading, unless the clothes, the beard, the girls, the poor or good condition of the poet can be considered a kind of knowledge. But I was taken aback by Sylvia Plath's reading. It was not anything like I could have imagined. Not a trace of the modest, retreating, humorous Worcester, Massachusetts, of
Elizabeth Bishop
; nothing of the swallowed plain Pennsylvania of
Marianne Moore
. Instead these bitter poems?"Daddy", "Lady Lazarus", "The Applicant", "Fever 103°"?were beautifully read, projected in full-throated, plump, diction-perfect, Englishy, mesmerizing cadences, all round and rapid, and paced and spaced. Poor recessive Massachusetts had been erased. "I have done it again!" Clearly, perfectly, staring you down. She seemed to be standing at a banquet like
Timon
, crying, "Uncover, dogs, and lap!"
[108]
Gwyneth Paltrow
portrayed Plath in the biopic
Sylvia
(2003). Elizabeth Sigmund, who was friends with both Plath and Hughes, criticized the movie for depicting Sylvia as "a permanent depressive and a possessive person", but she conceded that "the film has an atmosphere towards the end of her life which is heartbreaking in its accuracy".
[109]
Frieda Hughes
, who was only two years old when she lost her mother, was angered by the making of entertainment featuring her parents' troubled marriage and her mother's death. She accused the "peanut crunching" public of wanting to be titillated by her family's tragedies.
[110]
In 2003, Frieda reacted to the situation in the poem "My Mother", first published in
Tatler
:
[111]
Now they want to make a film
For anyone lacking the ability
To imagine the body, head in oven,
Orphaning children
... they think
I should give them my mother's words
To fill the mouth of their monster,
Their Sylvia Suicide Doll
Musical settings
[
edit
]
- In his
Ariel
: Five Poems of Sylvia Plath
(1971), American composer
Ned Rorem
has set for soprano, clarinet and piano the poems "Words", "Poppies In July", "The Hanging Man", "Poppies In October", and "
Lady Lazarus
."
[112]
[113]
- Also drawing from
Ariel
, in his
Six Poems by Sylvia Plath
for solo soprano (1975), German composer
Aribert Reimann
has set the poems "Edge", "Sheep In Fog", "The Couriers", "The Night Dances", and "Words."
[114]
He later set "
Lady Lazarus
" (1992), also for solo soprano.
[115]
[116]
- Finnish composer
Kaija Saariaho
's five-part
From the Grammar of Dreams
for soprano and mezzo a cappella (1988)
[117]
is constructed on a collage of fragments from
The Bell Jar
and the poem "Paralytic."
[118]
The piece was also arranged by the composer into a version for soprano and electronics (2002), in which the singer sings in interaction with a recorded double of her own voice.
[119]
Albeit composed as a concert piece,
From the Grammar of Dreams
has also been staged.
[120]
[121]
- American composer
Juliana Hall
's
Lorelei
(1989) for mezzo, horn, and piano is a setting of Plath's poem of the same name.
[122]
Hall had previously set "The Night Dances" as a movement of her cycle for soprano and piano
Night Dances
(1987) featuring texts by five female poets,
[123]
[124]
and went on to write a song cycle for soprano and piano entirely devoted to Plath,
Crossing The Water
(2011), which comprises the poems "Street Song", "Crossing The Water", "Rhyme", and "Alicante Lullaby."
[125]
- In her cycle for soprano and piano
The Blood Jet
(2006), American composer
Lori Leitman
set the poems "Morning Song", "The Rival", "Kindness", and "Balloons."
[126]
[127]
Publication list
[
edit
]
Poetry collections
[
edit
]
- The Colossus and Other Poems
(1960, William Heinemann)
- Ariel
(1965, Faber and Faber)
- Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices
(1968, Turret Books)
[128]
- Crossing the Water
(1971, Faber and Faber)
- Winter Trees
(1971, Faber and Faber)
- The Collected Poems
(1981, Faber and Faber)
- Selected Poems
(1985, Faber and Faber)
- Ariel: The Restored Edition
(2004, Faber and Faber)
Collected prose and novels
[
edit
]
- The Bell Jar
, under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" (novel, 1963, Heinemann)
- Letters Home: Correspondence 1950?1963
(1975, Harper & Row, US; Faber and Faber, UK)
- Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
(1977, Faber and Faber)
- The Journals of Sylvia Plath
(1982, Dial Press)
- The Magic Mirror
(1989), Plath's Smith College senior thesis
- The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
, edited by Karen V. Kukil (2000, Anchor Books)
I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life.
- The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 1
, edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil (2017, Faber and Faber)
- The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2
, edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil (2018, Faber and Faber)
- Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom
(2019, Faber and Faber)
[129]
[130]
Children's books
[
edit
]
- The Bed Book
, illustrated by
Quentin Blake
(1976, Faber and Faber)
- The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit
(1996, Faber and Faber)
- Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen
(2001, Faber and Faber)
- Collected Children's Stories
(UK, 2001, Faber and Faber)
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
"On 15 July, when Sylvia came downstairs, Aurelia noticed that her daughter had a couple of partially healed scars on her legs. After being questioned about them, Sylvia told her mother that she had gashed herself in an effort to see if she had the guts. Then she took hold of Aurelia's hand and said: 'Oh, Mother, the world is so rotten! I want to die! Let's die together!'"
[17]
- ^
Two poems titled
Ennui (I)
and
Ennui (II)
are listed in a partial catalogue of Plath's
juvenilia
in the
Collected Poems
. A note explains that the texts of all but half a dozen of the many pieces listed are in the Sylvia Plath Archive of juvenilia in the
Lilly Library
at Indiana University. The rest are with the Sylvia Plath Estate.
- ^
Plath has been criticized for her numerous and controversial allusions to
the Holocaust
.
[98]
Citations
[
edit
]
- ^
Kihss, Peter.
"Sessions, Sylvia Plath and Updike Are Among Pulitzer Prize Winners"
.
The New York Times
.
Archived
from the original on May 14, 2021
. Retrieved
March 10,
2021
.
- ^
Kean, Danuta (April 11, 2017).
"Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes"
.
The Guardian
.
Archived
from the original on April 15, 2020
. Retrieved
March 9,
2021
.
The letters are part of an archive amassed by feminist scholar Harriet Rosenstein seven years after the poet's death, as research for an unfinished biography.
- ^
Catlett, Lisa Firestone Joyce (1998). "The Treatment of Sylvia Plath".
Death Studies
.
22
(7): 667?692.
doi
:
10.1080/074811898201353
.
ISSN
0748-1187
.
PMID
10342971
– via EBSCO.
- ^
"Sylvia Plath ? Poet | Academy of American Poets"
. Poets.org. February 4, 2014.
Archived
from the original on February 4, 2017
. Retrieved
March 9,
2018
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
q
r
s
Brown, Sally; Taylor, Clare L. (2017). "Plath [married name Hughes], Sylvia".
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(online ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi
:
10.1093/ref:odnb/37855
.
(Subscription or
UK public library membership
required.)
- ^
Tamas, Dorka (December 15, 2023).
"Behind the Iron Curtain: Sylvia Plath and Hungary During the Cold War"
.
E-Rea
.
21
(1).
doi
:
10.4000/erea.17121
.
- ^
a
b
c
Axelrod, Steven (April 24, 2007) [2003].
"Sylvia Plath"
.
The Literary Encyclopedia
.
Archived
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. Retrieved
June 1,
2007
.
- ^
Steinberg, Peter K. (2007) [1999].
"A celebration, this is"
.
sylviaplath.info
.
Archived
from the original on March 19, 2015.
- ^
Plath, Sylvia (1977) [1962].
"Ocean 1212-W"
.
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: And Other Prose Writings
. London: Faber and Faber. p. 130.
ISBN
0-571-11120-3
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
"Sylvia Plath"
. Academy of American Poets. February 4, 2014.
Archived
from the original on February 4, 2017.
- ^
a
b
"Sylvia Platt"
.
Smith College
.
Archived
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. Retrieved
June 20,
2021
.
- ^
a
b
Wilson, Andrew (February 2, 2013).
"Sylvia Plath in New York: 'pain, parties and work'
"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
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2023
.
- ^
Steinberg, Peter K. (Summer 2010).
"
"They Had to Call and Call": The Search for Sylvia Plath"
(PDF)
.
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3
.
ISSN
2155-8175
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on June 22, 2017
. Retrieved
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2018
.
- ^
Prouty, Olive Higgins (2013).
Now, Voyager
. Feminist Press at CUNY.
ISBN
978-1558614765
.
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a
b
c
Kirk 2004
, p. xix
- ^
Runco, Mark A.; Pritzker, Steven R., eds. (1999).
Encyclopedia of Creativity, Two-Volume Set
. Academic Press. p. 388.
ISBN
978-0122270758
.
Archived
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2017
.
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a
b
"Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes talk about their relationship"
.
The Guardian
. London. April 15, 2010.
Archived
from the original on November 11, 2014
. Retrieved
July 9,
2010
.
Extract from the 1961 BBC interview with Plath and Hughes. Now held in the
British Library
Sound Archive.
- ^
Bloom, Harold (2007)
Sylvia Plath
, Infobase Publishing, p. 76
- ^
Helle 2007
, p.
[
page needed
]
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Kirk 2004
, p. xx
- ^
a
b
"Plaque: Sylvia Plath"
.
London Remembers
.
Archived
from the original on March 22, 2016.
- ^
Kean, Danuta (April 11, 2017).
"Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes"
.
The Guardian
. London.
Archived
from the original on April 15, 2020
. Retrieved
April 14,
2017
.
- ^
"Haunted by the ghosts of love"
,
Guardian
, April 10, 1999.
- ^
"Sylvia Plath"
.
The Poetry Archive
.
Archived
from the original on July 3, 2017.
- ^
Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath ? a marriage examined
. From
The Contemporary Review
. Essay by Richard Whittington-Egan 2005
accessed July 9, 2010
- ^
a
b
Gifford 2008
, p. 15
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Kirk 2004
, p. xxi
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Cooper, Brian (June 2003).
"Sylvia Plath and the depression continuum"
.
J R Soc Med
.
96
(6): 296?301.
doi
:
10.1177/014107680309600613
.
PMC
539515
.
PMID
12782699
.
- ^
The Journals of Sylvia Plath
. Faber & Faber. February 17, 2011.
ISBN
9780571266357
.
Archived
from the original on February 10, 2022
. Retrieved
October 4,
2021
.
- ^
The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides: Dead Letters
(2008) Gary Lachman, Dedalus Press, University of Michigan, p. 145
- ^
"Drugs a 'key factor' in Plath's suicide, claimed Hughes | Books | The Guardian"
.
theguardian.com
. Retrieved
July 16,
2023
.
- ^
Alexander 2003
, p. 325.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Feinmann, Jane (February 16, 1993).
"Rhyme, reason and depression"
.
The Guardian
. London.
Archived
from the original on December 27, 2016.
- ^
Becker 2003
, p.
[
page needed
]
.
- ^
Guthmann, Edward (October 30, 2005).
"The Allure: Beauty and an easy route to death have long made the Golden Gate Bridge a magnet for suicides"
.
San Francisco Chronicle
.
Archived
from the original on May 25, 2017.
- ^
a
b
Thorpe, Vanessa (March 19, 2000).
"I failed her. I was 30 and stupid"
.
The Guardian
. London.
Archived
from the original on March 20, 2016.
- ^
Smith College.
Plath papers. Series 6
, Hughes. Plath archive.
- ^
a
b
Kirk 2004
, p. 104
- ^
Carmody & Carmody 1996
, p.
[
page needed
]
.
- ^
Cheng'en Wu
, translated and abridged by
Arthur Waley
(1942)
Monkey: Folk Novel of China
.
UNESCO
collection, Chinese series. Grove Press.
- ^
Bates, Stephen (March 23, 2009).
"Son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes kills himself"
.
The Guardian
. London.
Archived
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- ^
"Poet Plath's son takes own life"
.
BBC
. London. March 23, 2009.
Archived
from the original on March 26, 2009.
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a
b
c
Stevenson 1994
- ^
"Sylvia Plath's Cambridge-era Prose: A Survey"
.
sylviaplathinfo.blogspot.com
. Retrieved
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2023
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Wagner-Martin 1988
, pp. 2?5
- ^
Plath
Biographical Note
294?295. From
Wagner-Martin 1988
, p. 107
- ^
Plath
Biographical Note 293
. From
Wagner-Martin 1988
, p. 112
- ^
Jernigan, Adam T. (January 1, 2014). "Paraliterary Labors in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar: Typists, Teachers, and the Pink-Collar Subtext".
Modern Fiction Studies
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60
(1): 1?27.
doi
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.
OCLC
5561439112
.
S2CID
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.
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Plath, Sylvia (1979). Ted Hughes (ed.).
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
(2nd ed.). London: Faber and Faber. p. vii,
cited in
Ferretter 2009
, p. 15
- ^
Heinz, Drue
(Spring 1995).
"Ted Hughes, The Art of Poetry No. 71"
.
The Paris Review
. Spring 1995 (134): 98,
cited in
Ferretter 2009
, p. 15
- ^
Olwyn Hughes, Corrections of
Diane Middlebrook
's
Her Husband
. Emory University Libraries: Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL), Olwyn Hughes Papers 1956?1997, box 2, folder 20 ? cited in
Ferretter 2009
, p. 15
- ^
Plath, Sylvia (March 13, 2008).
"Ariel"
.
The Guardian
. London.
Archived
from the original on March 12, 2017.
- ^
a
b
Wagner-Martin 1988
, p. 184
- ^
"10 Most Famous Poems by Sylvia Plath | Learnodo Newtonic"
.
learnodo-newtonic.com
.
Archived
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. Retrieved
May 30,
2020
.
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The Paris Review
Interviews: "The Art of Poetry No. 15. Anne Sexton". Interview by Barbara Kevles. Issue 52, Summer 1971
Archived
June 13, 2010, at the
Wayback Machine
. Accessed July 15, 2010
- ^
Brain 2001
;
Brain 2006
, pp.
11
?32;
Brain 2007
- ^
Plath, Sylvia.
The Colossus and Other Poems
, Faber and Faber, 1977.
- ^
"Unpublished Plath sonnet goes online tomorrow"
. Associated Press. October 31, 2006.
Archived
from the original on September 26, 2014
. Retrieved
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2012
.
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a
b
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, p. xxii
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a
b
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, p. ix
- ^
Viner, Katharine (October 20, 2003).
"Desperately seeking Sylvia"
.
The Guardian
. London.
Archived
from the original on March 12, 2017.
- ^
Short news report on Plath's grave, featuring some of her poetry
on
YouTube
- ^
"Sylvia Plath's Tombstone in England Defaced, Removed : 25 Years After Her Suicide, Tormented American Poet Finds No Peace"
.
Los Angeles Times
. Associated Press. June 5, 1988.
Archived
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.
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, p. 252
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Nadeem Azam (2001).
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Archived
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,
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. March 17, 2016
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Archived
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(2014), Open Road Media.
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Rose, Jacqueline (February 1, 1998).
"The happy couple"
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Archived
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.
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.
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Archived
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Book review,
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.
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Strangeways, Al; Plath, Sylvia (Autumn 1996).
"
'The Boot in the Face': The Problem of the Holocaust in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath"
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. Archived from
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Moore, Honor (March 2009).
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.
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Thorpe, Vanessa (September 17, 2011).
"Sylvia Plath given stamp of approval"
.
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Archived
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"U.S. Twentieth-Century Poets block in demand"
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Archived
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Padnani, Amisha
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2021
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Malcolm, Janet
(August 15, 1993).
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Archived
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Carrell, Severin (December 28, 2003).
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.
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Archived
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January 18,
2019
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"Plath film angers daughter"
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BBC
. February 3, 2003.
Archived
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Hughes, Frieda
(2003).
"My Mother"
.
The Book of Mirrors
. Archived from
the original
on May 28, 2012.
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Hubbard Claflin, Beverly (1987).
A Musical Analysis and Poetic Interpretation of Ned Rorem's Ariel
. Arizona State University.
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Lieson Miller, Philip (December 1978).
"The Songs of Ned Rorem"
.
Tempo, Cambridge University Press
(127): 25?31.
JSTOR
945957
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Dobretsberger, Barbara (2002).
"Aribert Reimann : Six Poems by Sylvia Plath"
.
Anglophonia/Caliban
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11
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doi
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10.3406/calib.2002.1443
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"Lady Lazarus"
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"Saariaho: From the Grammar of Dreams; Farewell"
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Holder Brezna, Leena (2016).
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Shin, Il Hong (2023).
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Lines, Carol (September 1, 2007).
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artsongs.com
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Archived
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2019
.
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"Exclusive Sylvia Plath extract: Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom"
.
The Guardian
. December 29, 2018.
Archived
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2021
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Grady, Constance (January 22, 2019).
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.
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Sources
[
edit
]
- Alexander, Paul (2003) [1991].
Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath
. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press.
ISBN
0-306-81299-1
.
- Alvarez, Al
(2007).
Risky Business: People, Pastimes, Poker and Books
. London: Bloomsbury.
ISBN
978-0-7475-8744-6
.
- Badia, Janet; Phegley, Jennifer (2005).
Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present
. University of Toronto Press.
ISBN
0-8020-8928-3
.
- Becker, Jillian
(2003).
Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath
. New York: St Martins Press.
ISBN
0-312-31598-8
.
- Brain, Tracy (2001).
The Other Sylvia Plath
. Harlow, Essex: Longman.
ISBN
0-582-32729-6
.
- Brain, Tracy (2006). "Dangerous Confessions: The Problem of Reading Sylvia Plath Biographically". In Jo Gill (ed.).
Modern Confessional Writing: New Critical Essays
. London: Routledge.
ISBN
0-415-33969-3
.
- Brain, Tracy. "The Indeterminacy of the Plath Canon". In
Helle (2007)
, pp. 17?38.
- Butscher, Edward (2003).
Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness
. Tucson, Arizona: Schaffner Press.
ISBN
0-9710598-2-9
.
- Carmody, Denise Lardner; Carmody, John Tully (1996).
Mysticism: Holiness East and West
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
0-19-508819-0
.
- Christodoulides, Nephie (2005).
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking: Motherhood in Sylvia Plath's Work
. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
ISBN
90-420-1772-4
.
- Dalrymple, Theodore
(2010).
Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality
. London: Gibson Square Books.
ISBN
978-1-906142-61-2
.
- Ferretter, Luke (2009).
Sylvia Plath's Fiction: A Critical Study
(1st ed.). Edinburgh University Press.
doi
:
10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625093.001.0001
.
ISBN
978-0-7486-2509-3
.
JSTOR
10.3366/j.ctt1r25c0
.
- Gifford, Terry (2008).
Ted Hughes
. Routledge.
ISBN
978-0-415-31189-2
.
- Gill, Jo (2006).
The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath
. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
0-521-84496-7
.
- Helle, Anita, ed. (2007).
The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath
. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
ISBN
978-0-472-06927-9
.
- Hughes, Frieda
(2004).
Foreword
.
Ariel: The Restored Edition
. By Plath, Sylvia. London: Faber and Faber.
ISBN
0-06-073259-8
.
Archived
from the original on May 27, 2017 – via British Library.
- Kibler, James E. Jr, ed. (1980).
American Novelists Since World War II
(A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book). Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 6 (2nd ed.). Detroit: Gale.
ISBN
0-8103-0908-4
.
- Kirk, Connie Ann
(2004).
Sylvia Plath: A Biography
. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
ISBN
0-313-33214-2
.
- McCullough, Frances (2005) [1963]. Introduction.
The Bell Jar
. By Plath, Sylvia (1st Harper Perennial Classics ed.). New York: Perennial Classics.
ISBN
0-06-093018-7
.
- Morgan, Robin
(1970).
Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement
. New York: Random House.
ISBN
0-394-45240-2
.
- Peel, Robin. "The Political Education of Sylvia Plath". In
Helle (2007)
, pp. 39?64.
- Plath, Sylvia (2000). Karen V. Kukil (ed.).
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
. New York: Anchor.
ISBN
0-385-72025-4
.
- Stevenson, Anne
(1990) [1989].
Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath
. London: Penguin.
ISBN
0-14-010373-2
.
- Stevenson, Anne (1994). "Plath, Sylvia". In Hamilton, Ian (ed.).
The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
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- Taylor, Robert (1986).
Saranac: America's Magic Mountain
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
ISBN
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.
- Thomas, David N.
(2008).
Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?
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ISBN
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- Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. (1988).
Sylvia Plath (Critical Heritage)
. London: Routledge.
doi
:
10.4324/9780203709191
.
ISBN
0-415-00910-3
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Axelrod, Steven Gould. (1992).
Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words
. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University.
ISBN
0-8018-4374-X
.
- Bawer, Bruce
(2007).
"Chapter 1: On Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry"
. In
Bloom, Harold
(ed.).
Sylvia Plath
. Bloom's Literary Criticism. pp. 7?20.
ISBN
9781438121710
.
- Clark, Heather (2011).
The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
9780199558193
.
OCLC
718024305
.
- Clark, Heather L. (2020).
Red Comet: The short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath
(First ed.). New York: Knopf.
ISBN
978-0-307-96116-7
.
OCLC
1128061536
.
- Egeland, M. (2014). "Before and After a Poet's Suicide: The Reception of Sylvia Plath".
International Journal of the Book
.
11
(3): 27?36.
doi
:
10.18848/1447-9516/CGP/v11i03/37023
.
- Hayman, Ronald
. (1991).
The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath
. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Publishing.
ISBN
1-55972-068-9
.
- Hemphill, Stephanie
. (2007).
Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
0-375-83799-X
.
- Kyle, Barry
. (1976).
Sylvia Plath: A Dramatic Portrait; Conceived and Adapted from Her Writings
. London: Faber and Faber.
ISBN
0-571-10698-6
.
- Malcolm, Janet
. (1995).
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
. New York: Vintage.
ISBN
0-679-75140-8
.
- Miceli, Barbara (2016).
"Sylvia Plath beyond the Confessional Poetry: A Close Reading of the Poem "On the Decline of Oracles"
"
.
Polifemo
(11?12). Libera Universita di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM: 111?123.
- Middlebrook, Diane
. (2003).
Her Husband: Hughes and Plath ? a Marriage
. New York: Viking.
ISBN
0-670-03187-9
- Meyers, Jeffrey
(June?July 2014). "Plath's rapist".
The London Magazine
: 137?144.
- Oates, Joyce Carol
(November 24, 2015).
"Essays on Plath"
.
- Parker, James (June 2013).
"Why Sylvia Plath haunts us"
. The Culture File. The Omnivore.
The Atlantic
.
311
(5): 34, 36
. Retrieved
July 6,
2015
.
- Steinberg, Peter K. (2004).
Sylvia Plath
. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Chelsea House.
ISBN
0-7910-7843-4
.
- Tabor, Stephen. (1988).
Sylvia Plath: An Analytical Bibliography
. London: Mansell.
ISBN
0-7201-1830-1
.
- Taylor, Tess
(February 12, 2013).
"Reading Sylvia Plath 50 Years After Her Death Is A Different Experience"
.
NPR
. Retrieved
July 11,
2017
.
- Wadsworth, F. B.; Vasseur, J.; Damby, D. E. (2017). "Evolution of vocabulary in the poetry of Sylvia Plath".
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
.
32
(3): 660?671.
- Wagner, Erica
. (2002).
Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of
Birthday Letters
. New York: W. W. Norton.
ISBN
0-393-32301-3
.
- Wagner-Martin, Linda. (2003).
Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life
. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
ISBN
0-333-63114-5
.
External links
[
edit
]
- Sylvia Plath
at
Curlie
- Sylvia Plath
at
IMDb
- Peter K. Steinberg's
A celebration, this is
- Plath profile from American Academy of Poets
- Sylvia Plath drawings at The Mayor Gallery
The Daily Telegraph
- Works by Sylvia Plath
at
Faded Page
(Canada)
- Sylvia Plath
at the British Library
- Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath collection
at University of Victoria, Special Collections
- Sylvia Plath collection, 1952?1989
,
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
, Emory University Libraries
- Harriet Rosenstein research files on Sylvia Plath, 1910?2018
, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University Libraries
- Sylvia Plath Collection
at the Mortimer Rare Book Collection, Smith College Special Collections
- Matthies, Gesa (2016).
The Lady in the Book ? Sylvia Plath, portraits
. France. Archived from
the original
on September 14, 2018
. Retrieved
September 13,
2018
.
- Gesa Matthies (2016).
The lady in the book
. Ana Films
. Retrieved
February 12,
2022
.
- BBC
profile and video.
BBC archive
. Plath reading "Lady Lazarus" from
Ariel
(sound file)
Archived
February 24, 2018, at the
Wayback Machine
- Review of "Sylvia Plath: A Dramatic Portrait"
adapted by
Barry Kyle
, January 21, 1981
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