Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. 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 (1963), a semi-autobiographical novel published one month before her suicide. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth person to receive this honor posthumously. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and then the University of Cambridge in England, where she was a Fulbright student at Newnham College. In 1959, Plath took a creative writing seminar with Robert Lowell at Boston University, alongside poets Anne Sexton and George Starbuck. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956 in London. In 1957, they briefly moved to the United States, but moved back to England in winter 1959. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands. They had two children, Frieda and Nicholas, 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). She died by suicide in 1963.