Chronicle of Higher Education, June 22, 2001, Carlin Romano, "Martin and Hannah and Sylvia and Ted," p. B21.

Hayman, Ronald. (1991). The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Publishing. ISBN 1-55972-068-9. Before her death, Plath tried several times to take her own life. [37] On August 24, 1953, she overdosed on sleeping pills, [38] then, in June 1962, she drove her car off the side of the road into a river, which she later said was an attempt to take her own life. [39] Throughout this period, Plath’s two-headed demon of self-doubt and ambitious perfectionism never leaves her: “ Again, I feel the gulf between my desire and ambition and my naked abilities.” The phrase “a life is passing” forms a motif, and she puts great pressure on herself to write, thereby re-creating her life. Such re-creation makes her feel godlike, gives her the aura of immortality and control. In this period of transition, she wants to succeed in the adult literary world, not in the adolescent markets where she has experienced what she now characterizes as facile success. At the same time, she admits that she depends too much on having poems published in The New Yorker. She is often frankly envious of and acidly humorous about more successful writers. Nevertheless, Plath continues to fight her demon, the one who “wants me to think I’m so good I must be perfect. Or nothing.” Steinberg, Peter K. (Summer 2010). " "They Had to Call and Call": The Search for Sylvia Plath" (PDF). Plath Profiles. 3. ISSN 2155-8175. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 22, 2017 . Retrieved August 16, 2018. Gill, Jo (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-84496-7.Now with me, writing is the first delight in life. I want time and money to write, both very necessary. I will not sacrifice my time to learn shorthand because I do not want any of the jobs which shorthand would open up, although those jobs are no doubt very interesting for girls who want them. I do not want the rigid hours of a magazine or publishing job. I do not want to type other people’s letters and read their manuscripts. I want to type my own and write my own. So secretarial training is out for me. That I know. (Sylvia Plath's letter to her mother, 10 Feb 1955) Double Exposure [ edit ] Sylvia Plath ( / p l æ θ/; October 27, 1932– February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. 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. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour posthumously. [1] a b "Sylvia Platt". Smith College. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021 . Retrieved June 20, 2021.

In 1971, the volumes Winter Trees and Crossing the Water were published in the UK, including nine previously unseen poems from the original manuscript of Ariel. [36] Writing in New Statesman, fellow poet Peter Porter wrote: Newman considered The Bell Jar a “testing ground” for Plath’s poems. It is, according to the critic, “one of the few American novels to treat adolescence from a mature point of view. ... It chronicles a nervous breakdown and consequent professional therapy in non-clinical language. And finally, it gives us one of the few sympathetic portraits of what happens to one who has genuinely feminist aspirations in our society, of a girl who refuses to be an event in anyone’s life. ... [Plath] remains among the few woman writers in recent memory to link the grand theme of womanhood with the destiny of modern civilization.” Plath told Alvarez that she published the book under a pseudonym partly because “she didn’t consider it a serious work ... and partly because she thought too many people would be hurt by it.” Taylor, Tess (February 12, 2013). "Reading Sylvia Plath 50 Years After Her Death Is A Different Experience". NPR . Retrieved July 11, 2017. Plath, Sylvia, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962, edited by Karen V. Kukil, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 2000.Grady, Constance (January 22, 2019). "Sylvia Plath wrote this short story in 1952. It's now out in print for the first time". Vox. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020 . Retrieved January 12, 2021. Malcolm, Janet (August 15, 1993). "The Mystery of Sylvia Plath". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021 . Retrieved January 28, 2021. Guthmann, Edward (October 30, 2005). "The Allure: Beauty and an easy route to death have long made the Golden Gate Bridge a magnet for suicides". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on May 25, 2017.

Observer, June 1, 1986; February 18, 1996; March 19, 2000, Kate Kellaway, "The Poet Who Died So Well," p. 21.Helle, Anita, ed. (2007). The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-06927-9. Newman, Charles, editor, The Art of Sylvia Plath: A Symposium, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1970.

A Poet's Guide to Britain: Sylvia Plath". BBC. May 11, 2009. Archived from the original on September 1, 2013 . Retrieved July 31, 2013. At times, Plath was able to overcome the “tension between the perceiver and the thing-in-itself by literally becoming the thing-in-itself,” wrote Newman. “In many instances, it is nature who personifies her.” Similarly, Plath used history “to explain herself,” writing about the Nazi concentration camps as though she had been imprisoned there. She said, “I think that personal experience shouldn’t be a kind of shut box and mirror-looking narcissistic experience. I believe it should be generally relevant, to such things as Hiroshima and Dachau, and so on.” Newman explained that, “in absorbing, personalizing the socio-political catastrophes of the century, [Plath] reminds us that they are ultimately metaphors of the terrifying human mind.” Alvarez noted that the “anonymity of pain, which makes all dignity impossible, was Sylvia Plath’s subject.” Her reactions to the smallest desecrations, even in plants, were “extremely violent,” wrote Hughes. “Auschwitz and the rest were merely the open wounds.” In sum, Newman believed, Plath “evolved in poetic voice from the precocious girl, to the disturbed modern woman, to the vengeful magician, to Ariel—God’s Lioness.” Then the worst happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room, but no one told me came over and was looking hard in my eyes and it was Ted Hughes.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath Padnani, Amisha (March 8, 2018). "How an Obits Project on Overlooked Women Was Born". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 23, 2018 . Retrieved March 24, 2018.

Let’s face it, I am in danger of wanting my personal absolute to be a demigod of a man, and as there aren’t many around, I often unconsciously manufacture my own.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath So I am led to one or two choices. Can I write? Will I write if I practice enough? How much should I sacrifice to writing anyway, before I find out if I’m any good?” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Sylvia's eighth birthday, [7] of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes. He had become ill shortly after a close friend died of lung cancer. 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. Raised as a Unitarian, Plath experienced a loss of faith after her father's death and remained ambivalent about religion throughout her life. [12] Her father was buried in Winthrop Cemetery in Massachusetts. A visit to her father's grave later prompted Plath to write the poem "Electra on Azalea Path". Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) was an American author and poet. Plath is primarily known for her poetry, but earned her greatest reputation for her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, published pseudonymously weeks before her death.