Sylvia Plath's only novel, about Esther Greenwood, a gifted college student whose summer internship in New York gives way to depression, a suicide attempt and treatment. For readers who want the plot, the symbols and the context.
Author · 1 summary
Sylvia Plath
American poet and novelist
- Born
- 27 October 1932
- Died
- 11 February 1963 (aged 30)
- Birthplace
- Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Nationality
- American
- Occupation
- Poet, Novelist
- Known for
- The Bell Jar and the poems of Ariel
- Wikipedia
- Read the article
About Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston. Her father, a biology professor and expert on bees, died when she was eight, the same year she published her first poem. She won a scholarship to Smith College.
In the summer of 1953 she worked as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York. Back home she fell into a deep depression, attempted suicide and was treated with electroconvulsive therapy. She returned to Smith, graduated with top honors and won a Fulbright scholarship to Cambridge, where she met and married the English poet Ted Hughes.
The Bell Jar, her only novel, turns that summer and breakdown into the story of Esther Greenwood. It argues that the narrow roles open to women in 1950s America could suffocate a gifted young woman. It came out in London in January 1963 under the pen name Victoria Lucas. A month later, separated from Hughes and living in London with their two children, Plath died by suicide at 30.
Ariel (1965) collected the poems of her last months. Her Collected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982, the first given to a poet after death.
Books by Sylvia Plath
New books, occasionally