Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Born to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Sylvia
Plath published her first poem when she was eight. Sensitive,
intelligent, compelled toward perfection in everything she attempted,
she was, on the surface, a model daughter, popular in school, earning
straight A's, winning the best prizes. By the time she entered Smith
College on a scholarship in 1950 she already had an impressive list
of publications, and while at Smith she wrote over four hundred
poems.
Sylvia's surface perfection was however underlain by grave
personal discontinuities, some of which doubtless had their origin in
the death of her father (he was a college professor and an expert on
bees) when she was eight. During the summer following her junior
year at Smith, having returned from a stay in New York City where she
had been a student ``guest editor'' at Mademoiselle Magazine, Sylvia
nearly succeeded in killing herself by swallowing sleeping pills.
She later described this experience in an autobiographical novel, The
Bell Jar, published in 1963. After a period of recovery involving
electroshock and psychotherapy Sylvia resumed her pursuit of academic
and literary success, graduating from Smith summa cum laude in 1955 and winning a
Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge, England.
In 1956 she married the English poet
Ted Hughes ,
and in 1960, when she
was 28, her first book, The Colossus, was published in England. The poems in
this book---formally precise, well wrought---show clearly the
dedication with which Sylvia had served her apprenticeship; yet they
give only glimpses of what was to come in the poems she would begin
writing early in 1961. She and Ted Hughes settled for a while in an
English country village in Devon, but less than two years after the
birth of their first child the marriage broke apart.
The winter of 1962-63, one of the coldest in centuries, found Sylvia
living in a small London flat, now with two children, ill with flu and low on
money. The hardness of her life seemed to increase her need to
write, and she often worked between four and eight in the morning,
before the children woke, sometimes finishing a poem a day. In these
last poems it is as if some deeper, powerful self has grabbed
control; death is given a cruel physical allure and psychic pain
becomes almost tactile.
On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath killed herself
with cooking gas at the age of 30. Two years later Ariel, a
collection of some of her last poems, was published; this was
followed by Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971, and, in
1981, The Collected Poems appeared, edited by Ted Hughes.
(after a bio by Bill Gilson)
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
- Ariel, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1965
- Collected Poems, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1981
- Crossing the Water, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1971
- Selected Poems, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1985
- The Colossus, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1967
- Three Women, London: Turret Books 1968
(a monologue for tree voices)
- Winter Trees, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1971
Other
- The Bell Jar, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1966
(first published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, 1963)
Esther, an A-student from Boston who has won a guest editorship on a national magazine,
finds a bewildering new world at her feet. Her New York life is crowded with possibilities, so that the choice of future is overwhelming, but
she can no longer retreat into the safety of her past. Deciding she wants to be a writer above all
else, Esther is also struggling with the perennial problems of morality, behaviour and identity. In
this compelling autobiographical novel, a milestone in contemporary literature, Sylvia Plath
chronicles her teenage years - her disappointments, anger, depression and eventual breakdown
and treatment - with stunning wit and devastating honesty. --Penguin Books
more information
(remote)
- Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1979
- The Journals of Sylvia Plath, New York, Ballantine Books 1983
- Letters Home. Correspondance 1950 - 1963, selected & edited with
commentary by Aurelia Schober Plath, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1976
- The Bed Book, London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1976
A book for children by Sylvia Plath, illustrated by Quentin Bell
- The It Doesn't Matter Suit, St. Martin's Press, 1996.
A book for children by Sylvia Plath, illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner
Rediscovered thirty-three years after Sylvia Plath's death, The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit is a
delightful fable featuring the adventures of little Max Nix.
Max Nix lives with his six brothers and Mama and Papa Nix in a small village called Winkelburg.
Max is happy - except for one thing: Max longs for a suit. Not just an ordinary work-a-day suit,
but a suit for doing Everything. One day, a mysterious parcel arrives - but whom is it for? When it
is opened, the fun begins - for inside is a woolly, whiskery, brand new, mustard-yellow suit and
the first person to try it on is Papa ... --Penguin
Videos and Tapes
- The Bell Jar, read by Fiona Shaw
Penguin 1996 (2 x Audio cassette (approx 3 hours)) ISBN: 0140864091
- The It-doesn't-matter Suit, Penguin 1996,
(1 x Audio cassette (approx 30 minutes)) ISBN: 0140864253
- Voices and Visions: Sylvia Plath, 1986 (colour video VHS, 60 minutes)
Archival footage of 1950s pop culture chronicles Sylvia
Plath's historical environment. Other footage depicts
scenes of her physical environments--Massachusetts, New
York, Smith College, London, and the Devon countryside.
Critics discuss the complex nature of the relationship
between the poet's troubled life and her brilliant work.
On Sylvia Plath
- Paul Alexander (ed.): Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia Plath. Harper and Row, 1985
- Elaine Connell:
Sylvia Plath: Killing the Angel in the House. Pennine Pens
- Nancy D. Hargrove: The journey toward Ariel. 1994
- Janet Malcolm: The Silent Woman. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, London: Picador 1994
- Anne Stevenson: Bitter Fame. A life of Sylvia Plath. Boston 1989
- Linda Wagner-Martin (ed.): Sylvia Plath: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge 1988
Poems by Sylvia Plath
Poems inspired by Sylvia Plath
A list of other resources on Sylvia Plath on the net
Non-English Sylvia Plath Pages
A French Sylvia Plath Homepage (Club des Poetes) with a short biography and an article
plus a poem in French (Celibataire)
A Spanish Sylvia Plath Page with a short introduction and notes about the
Spanish editions of Johnny Panic and her Diary (which can be ordered there)
2 poems in Spanish (Espejo, Cruzando el Agua)
go to Anja's literature page
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Last Modified: 24 Nov 1997 Anja Beckmann