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Sylvia Plath ( October 27, 1932 - February 11, 1963) was an American poet, author, and essayist. 1 Life
Born in Boston, Plath showed early promise, publishing her first poem at the age of 8; her father, Otto, a college professor and noted authority on the subject of bees, died around the same time, on October 5, 1940. She continued to try and publish poems and short stories in American magazines and achieved marginal success.
In her junior year at Smith College, Plath made the first of her suicide attempts: she later detailed this in the autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. She was committed to a mental institution, McLean HospitalMcLean Hospital is a mental hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts noted for the large number of famous people who have been treated there, including Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, and poets Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath. The hospital is also t. She seemed to make an acceptable recovery and graduated from Smith with
honours.
She obtained a Fulbright scholarship to Cambridge University where she pursued her poetry, occasionally publishing her work in the student newspaper VarsityThe word varsity can refer to several things. Varsity teams in the United States and Canada. In Britain, a varsity match is a sports fixture played between traditional sporting rival Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. Varsity is Cambridge Universi. It was at Cambridge that she met EnglishEngland is the largest, the most populous, and the most densely populated of the four " Home Nations" which make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). Occupying the south-eastern portion of the island of Great Britain, England poet Ted HughesEdward James Hughes ( August 17, 1930 in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire October 28, 1998) was an English poet. Hughes studied English, anthropology and archaeology at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he met Sylvia Plath. They married on June 16, 1956, sepa. They were married on June 16June 16 is the 167th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (168th in leap years), with 198 days remaining. Events 1487 Battle of Stoke Field, the last dying breath of the Wars of the Roses 1586 Mary Queen of Scots recognizes Philip II of Spain as her, 19561956 is a leap year starting on Sunday. see link for calendar) Events January January 1 End of Anglo- Egyptian Condominium in Sudan. January 16 President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt vows to reconquer Palestine January 26 1956 Winter Olympic Games open in. Plath and Hughes spent from July 1957 to October 1959 living and working in the United States. Plath taught at Smith. They then moved to Boston where Plath sat in on seminars with Robert Lowell. This course was to have a profound influence on her work. Also attending the seminars was Anne Sexton. At this time the couple also met, for the first time, W. S. Merwin who admired their work and was to remain a lifelong friend. On hearing that Plath was pregnant the couple moved back to the United Kingdom.
She and Hughes lived in London for a while and then settled in a small village in Devon, North Tawton. She published her first collection of poetry, The Colossus, in England in 1960. In February 1961 she suffered a miscarriage. A number of poems addressed this event. The marriage met with difficulties and they were separated less than two years after the birth of their first child.
Plath returned to London with their children, Frieda and Nicholas. She rented a flat in a house where W. B. Yeats once lived, Plath was extremely pleased with this and considered it a good omen. She began Legal Separation proceedings. The winter of 1962/1963 turned into one of the harshest in living memory. On February 11, 1963, ill and possibly low on money, Plath committed suicide in her kitchen by gas asphyxiation. She is buried in the churchyard at Heptonstall, West Yorkshire.
