Author+Bio.+of+Sylvia+Plath

= Author Sylvia Plath... = //By: Corey Hoffman //

Born 1932 in the small seaside town of Winthrop Massachusetts where she would spend the majority of her childhood. Her mother was of Austrian ancestry, and her father was an internationally recognized expert on bees. In 1940 her father died after a long and difficult bout with disease, after this her mother moved them inland to Wellesley, a suburb of Boston. She began to write poetry at an early age and for her poems she received much acclaim. By seventeen her interest in writing grew however it still did not come easily. She submitted 45 pieces to the magazine //Seventeen// before her first short story //And Summer Will Not Come Again// was published in the August 1950 issue. In the same month her poem "Bitter Strawberries" was published by the //Christian Science Monitor//. Sylvia enrolled in Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts during September of the same year. She went with scholarship one endowed by Olive Prouty author of //Stella Dallas// who later become a close friend and patron, and one from the Wellesley Smith Club. It was during this time that Sylvia wrote poetry on a precise schedule. In 1953 at the time of the Rosenberg electrocutions Sylvia was selling her poems for roughly 100$ a piece to //Harper's Magazine//, however this was to be followed by a six month crash in her life. Stresses from her life and the continuously looming deadlines caused a psychotic breakdown similar to the one that Esther suffers in the novel; Sylvia received electro shock therapy then like Esther she "disappeared" was found and was subsequently sent through multiple mental institutions where she received more electroshock therapy. After her ordeal she returned to Smith College and then later graduated in 1955. There she met poet Ted Hughes whom she married in London June 6th, 1956. In the spring of 1957 Sylvia and Ted moved back to the United States where Sylvia taught in the English department of Smith College, until 1959 when they returned to London together. In April of 1960 their first Child Frieda was born in fall of that same year Sylvia suffered a miscarriage and then a subsequent appendectomy. In may of 1961 she applied for a fellowship in the amount of $2,080 in order to finish a novel that she described as being one-sixth completed this would turn out to be //The Bell Jar//. I November of the same year Sylvia and her family moved into a thatched-roof country home in Devon, this is where she heard that her application for a fellowship had been accepted. On January 17, 1962 her second child a boy named Nicholas was born. After the publication of //The Bell Jar// and the misinterpretation of reviews coupled with the stress of completing her second collection of poems //Ariel//, on the morning of February 11, 1963 Sylvia sealed off her kitchen, consumed a bottle of sleeping pills and placed her head inside of a gas oven ending her life.



=Works Cited...=

Ames, Lois. "The Bell Jar and the Life of Sylvia Plath a Biographical Note." Afterword. //The Bell Jar//. By Sylvia Plath. Great Britain: Harper & Row, 1971. 3-15. Print.

=Related Links...=

Wikipedia page on Sylvia Plath

Further information on Sylvia Plath

[|Further information from Poets.org]