During this time she was not accepted into a Harvard writing seminar with author Frank O'Connor. A few weeks later, she slashed her legs to see if she had enough "courage" to kill herself. She hung around the White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel for two days, hoping to meet Thomas, but he was already on his way home. She was furious at not being at a meeting the editor had arranged with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas - a writer whom she loved, said one of her boyfriends, "more than life itself". The experience was not what she had hoped for, and many of the events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel The Bell Jar. After her third year of college, Plath was awarded a coveted position as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City. While at Smith, she lived in Lawrence House, and a plaque can be found outside her old room. In 1950, Plath attended Smith College, a private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts. College years and depression Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts Just after graduating from high school, she had her first national publication in the Christian Science Monitor. Plath attended Bradford Senior High School (now Wellesley High School) in Wellesley, graduating in 1950. Plath commented in "Ocean 1212-W", one of her final works, that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle-beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth". A visit to her father's grave later prompted Plath to write the poem "Electra on Azalea Path".Īfter Otto's death, Aurelia moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1942. Her father was buried in Winthrop Cemetery, in Massachusetts. Raised as a Unitarian, Plath experienced a loss of faith after her father's death and remained ambivalent about religion throughout her life. Comparing the similarities between his friend's symptoms and his own, Otto became convinced that he, too, had lung cancer and did not seek treatment until his diabetes had progressed too far. He had become ill shortly after a close friend died of lung cancer. Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Sylvia's eighth birthday, of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes. "Even in her youth, Plath was ambitiously driven to succeed." In addition to writing, she showed early promise as an artist, winning an award for her paintings from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1947. At age 11, Plath began keeping a journal. Over the next few years, Plath published multiple poems in regional magazines and newspapers. While living in Winthrop, eight-year-old Plath published her first poem in the Boston Herald 's children's section. Plath's mother, Aurelia, with Plath's maternal grandparents, the Schobers, had lived since 1920 in a section of Winthrop called Point Shirley, a location mentioned in Plath's poetry. In 1936 the family moved from 24 Prince Street in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to 92 Johnson Avenue, Winthrop, Massachusetts. On April 27, 1935, Plath's brother Warren was born. Plath's father was an entomologist and a professor of biology at Boston University who authored a book about bumblebees. Her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath (1906–1994), was a second-generation American of Austrian descent, and her father, Otto Plath (1885–1940), was from Grabow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany. Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and was treated multiple times with early versions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). They had two children before separating in 1962. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. īorn in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Cambridge, England, where she was a student at Newnham College. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour posthumously. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), and also The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. Sylvia Plath ( / p l æ θ/ October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
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