Sylvia Plath was born in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932 the oldest child of Otto and Aurelia Schoeber Plath. The daughter of a Boston Univesity German and entomology professor and a high school English teacher, Plath was raised in a household that valued learning highly. As a result, she grew up with an insatiable hunger to prove herself academically. In 1940, Sylvia's father died when she was only 8, and she was raised by her mother and grandparents. This early disruption would mold Plath's views on a world she continually felt isolated and rejected from-sparking the bipolar disorder she suffered from throughout her life. A zealous student, Plath devoted much of her time in school to writing and art, eventually winning a scholarship to attend Smith College in Northhampton. There she pushed herself even further, publishing her poetry and fiction in magazines like Seventeen, Harper's, and The Christian Science Monitor. During her junior year at Smith, Plath suffered an emotional breakdown and was taken out of school. She was prescribed what seemed the best treatment for depression at the time, electroshock therapy. In August of 1953, Plath attempted to overdose on sleeping pills. This suicide attempt would be recalled years later in her poem, "Lady Lazarus."

Resuming her studies the following year, after a long recuperation that included a stay at McClean's Hospital, she graduated summa cum laude from Smith College in 1955. Continuing her impressive academic work, she earned a Fulbright Scholarship that year to attend Cambridge University in England. There she met and fell in love with the poet Ted Hughes. After a whirlwind romance, they married in 1956, and the couple spent the summer traveling from Paris and Madrid to Benindorm, Spain. In 1957, Plath accepted a position teaching at her alma mater, Smith College, and the two moved to the United States in late June of that year. Hughes spent his time writing and enjoying the fame he garnered from his first book of poetry, The Hawk In The Rain. This success made Plath jealous and added further strain to their marriage. While the couple was in the United States, they traveled to California, Michigan, Montana and Utah. In 1959, Sylvia learned that she was pregnant, and the couple moved back to the United Kingdom. The following year, she published her first collection of poetry in England, The Colossus.

In 1961, Sylvia began work on an autobiographical novel called The Bell Jar and offered the completed manuscript to her publisher in October. The next year, she gave birth to her second child, and her book The Colossus was published in the United States to few reviews. By September of 1962, she and Hughes had separated after several arguments had erupted into violence. Living on her own with the children, Sylvia worked on a new collection of poems, Ariel, and spent the early half of winter working fruitfully on new poems. In mid-January, The Bell Jar was published in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. However, that winter was one of the worst on record for London and the weather only added to Plath's growing depression. In the early morning of February 11, 1963, she set some milk and bread for the children in their room, and going downstairs, sealed herself in the kitchen. Kneeling before the open oven, she turned the gas on and died within minutes. Her body was found the next morning.

Ariel, her final collection of poetry was compiled and released by her estranged husband in 1965, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Collected Poems followed in 1981. Though Plath's work has often been associated with the feminist movement, there is little evidence in the work itself to connect her to with any overt political motives. More than a confessional poet, Plath's late work strides the surreal while her early material shows a skill for traditional forms. In 2005, a new version of her book Ariel was released, presenting for the first time the original order and content of her 1962 manuscript. Sylvia Plath is buried in St. Thomas' Churchyard in Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, England.

Articles About Plath, Sylvia

Sylvia Plath and Winthrop-By-The-Sea	February 6, 2007
During her early years, Sylvia Plath lived in a number of places in Massachusetts. Of her youthful residences, none is more bleakly picturesque than Winthrop-By-The-Sea and the adjacent Point Shirley. It is a fitting childhood home for a poet whose words are more intensely chilling than almost any other.