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Sylvia Plath
-
Standard Name: Plath, Sylvia
Birth Name: Sylvia Plath
Married Name: Sylvia Hughes
SP
was primarily a poet, and most famously a confessional poet, although she also wrote a novel, a radio play, short stories and a book for children. She is best known for the poems she wrote in the last eighteen months that she lived. Her life story, complete with her suicide at the age of thirty, tends to overshadow her literary achievement, although critics of recent decades have made strides towards preserving her literary contribution and promoting its value.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Education | Betty Miller | At this point Betty entered St Paul's School for Girls
and then (having fallen ill) had a convalescent year at a Catholic
boarding school cum sanatorium at Berck-Plage near Boulogne. Miller, Sarah, and Betty Miller. “Introduction”. On the Side of the Angels, Virago, 1985, p. vii - xviii. viii Sylvia Plath
later... |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Anne Stevenson | He came back into her adult life in September 1953, and finally the Great Marriage Problem seemed settled. Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series. Gale Research, 1984. 9: 279 Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series. Gale Research, 1984. 9: 279 |
| Friends, Associates | Anne Sexton | AS
made many friends among her fellow poets: Kumin
, Soter
, William DeWitt Snodgrass
, Sylvia Plath
(whose death affected her deeply), George Starbuck
and James Wright
(who were also her lovers), and Anthony Hecht |
| Friends, Associates | Fay Weldon | Their social circle in north London included many writers and painters, including Ted Hughes
and Sylvia Plath
, David
and Assia Wevill
, Kingsley Amis
and Elizabeth Jane Howard
, Bernice Rubens
, psychologist R. D. Laing |
| Friends, Associates | Ruth Fainlight | RF
and her husband met Ted Hughes
and Sylvia Plath
in 1961, on the occasion of Hughes's winning the Hawthornden Prize, as Alan Sillitoe had done the previous year. The foursome first met, Fainlight recalled... |
| Health | Deborah Levy | About 2008 DL
felt close to breakdown. [L]ife was very hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn't see where there was to get to, she wrote later in the opening... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Deborah Levy | This book has four sections, each titled from a reason for writing, Political Purpose, Historical Impulse, Sheer Egoism, and Aesthetic Enthusiasm. The first and last describe a period of near-breakdown that... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Emily Brontë | Feminist literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert
responded to both Emilies in one of her poetic collections: Emily's Bread (1984), and Anne Carson
to EB
, her favourite author and main fear, which I mean to... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Edna St Vincent Millay | Thomas Hardy
(as reported by Elinor Wylie
) is believed to have said her poems were one of the only two great things in the United States, the other being the skyscraper. Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House, 2001. xiii, 290 |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Brigid Brophy | One of the twelve sections is no more fifty words. The novel's decadent style inhabits the minds of several characters, particularly that of the tall, fragile, perpetually exhausted but secretly sexually voracious Antonia Mount. Her... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Ann Oakley | The authors use as epigraph a passage from Sylvia Plath
's Three Women: a Poem for Three Voices. Oakley, Ann, Ann McPherson, and Helen Roberts. Miscarriage. Fontana, 1984. 9 |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Gillian Clarke | Her volume opens with a poem, Baby Sitting, which voices a guilty unwillingness to respond to a child's demands; M. Wynn Thomas
thinks this a response to the angrier, rawer Morning Song which opens... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Ruth Padel | Having loved and immersed herself in poetry all her life, RP
took a gamble and changed her self-definition from university lecturer in classics to professional writer and poet. Fifteen years later, writing of her own... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Germaine Greer | The chapters are headed with quotations ranging eclectically through the international canon and counter-canon from Sophocles
and The Ramayana of Valmiki (an ancient Indian epic) to Spike Milligan
, via Charles Baudelaire
, T. S. Eliot |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Carol Ann Duffy | The book was highly derivative. Though she had just discovered the poems of Pablo Neruda
, CAD
describes the contents of the volume as a mixture of Keats
and Sylvia Plath
and Dylan Thomas
and... |
Timeline
1866
The Royal Society of Arts established a scheme (believed to be the first in the world) for setting up commemorative plaques on buildings associated with famous people.
Quinn, Ben. “Plaque blues. Cuts hit heritage scheme”. Guardian Weekly, p. 16.
Early 1936
The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts
(who was put forward for this task by T. S. Eliot
), set out to define the modern movement, not just chronologically but according...
1948
The University of London
appointed Professor Lilian Penson
vice-chancellor, the first time a woman held this position at a British university.
18 October 1998
Ten days before Poet Laureate Ted Hughes
died, the Sunday Times carried his poem entitled The Offers, which he had excluded from both his books published this year, Birthday Letters (his last major collection)...
28 October 1998
10 September 2003
Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.
May 2009
The BBC
aimed to demonstrate that poetry is for everyone in a series launched this month: it succeeded in that sales of poetry soared in Britain.
6 October 2010
A previously unknown poem by Ted Hughes
, Last Letter, became available to the public when it was read on the BBC
's Channel 4 News by Jonathan Pryce
.
Kennedy, Maev. “Unknown poem reveals Ted Hughes’ torment over death of Sylvia Plath”. The Guardian.