Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. She began
publishing poems and stories
as a teenager and by the time she entered Smith College had won
several poetry prizes.
She was a Fulbright Scholar in Cambridge, England, and married
British poet Ted Hughes
in London in 1956. The young couple moved to the States, where
Plath became an
instructor at Smith College, and had two children. Later, they
moved back to England,
where Plath continued writing poetry and wrote The Bell Jar,
which was first published
under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in England in 1963. On February
11, 1963, Plath
committed suicide. The Bell Jar was first published under
her own name in the United
States by Harper & Row in 1971, despite the protests of Plath's
family. Plath's
Collected Poems, published posthumously in 1981, won the
Pulitzer Prize.
"[Her poems] have that exquisite, heart-breaking quality about them
that has
made Sylvia Plath our acknowledged Queen of Sorrows, the
spokeswoman for our most
private, most helpless nightmares. . . . Her poetry is as deathly
as it is impeccable;
it enchants us almost as powerfully as it must have enchanted her."
--Joyce Carol Oates,
The New York Times
"Sylvia Plath's eye is sharp . . . and her wits responsive to what
she sees." --Richard Howard,Poetry
"...The Colossus, which appeared earlier in England to unusual
acclaim [was] her first volume to be published in America.
Certainly the praise bestowed on her by British critics is
warranted; Sylvia Plath is indeed a rare talent and a consummate
craftsman...her powerful poems crackle and smolder with
energy."--Guy Owen, Books Abroad
"She steers clear of feminine charm, deliciousness, gentility,
supersensitivity and the act of being a poet. She simply writes
good poetry."--Al Alvarez, London Observer
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