Sylvia Plath
1932-1963
Plath was born in Boston. Her father was
a professor of biology and he was from
Poland. Her mother taught office skills
and was from Austria.
Her father died of complications from
diabetes when she was eight years old.
Plath started writing poems and stories in
elementary school. She published her first
poem in a Boston newspaper around the
time of her father’s death.
She was very persistent about getting her
work published. She was rejected by
Seventeen magazine 45 times before
finally getting published in 1950.
She was awarded a scholarship to attend Smith
College and in her junior year won a prize for
fiction writing from Mademoiselle magazine and
was awarded with a summer internship as a
guest editor.
After that summer, Plath became overcome with
depression and attempted suicide. This
experience was the basis for her novel The Bell
Jar.
She was treated with psychiatric treatment and
electroshock therapy. Plath was actually bipolar,
but this was before effective drug therapy was
available.
After graduating from Smith, Plath went to
Cambridge University in England on a
Fulbright fellowship.
While there she met the English poet Ted
Hughes, whom she married in 1956. They
lived in Boston at first and moved to
London in 1959.
In 1960, Plath published her first book of
poetry The Colossus and had a daughter,
Frieda. She gave birth to her son,
Nicholas, in 1962.
In 1963, Plath separated from her
husband and lived with her two children in
an unheated London flat.
In February, Plath’s depression returned
and she attempted suicide again, this time
succeeding.