Sylvia Plath

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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.
Black-and-white photo portrait of Sylvia Plath, looking directly at the camera and seated in front of bookshelves.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Features Judith Kazantzis
The errant unicorn that she struggles to ride is the poetic impulse, and she says she entertains incompatible wishes: to ride it hard towards social goals, but also not to be labelled or compelled along...
Residence Fleur Adcock
FA , re-migrating as an adult from New Zealand to London, arrived there a week after the suicide of Sylvia Plath .
Vincent, Sally. “Final touch”. Guardian Unlimited, 29 July 2000.
Adcock, Fleur. Poems: 1960-2000. Bloodaxe Books, 2000.
final page
Reception Ruth Fainlight
RF has drawn appreciative comment from fellow poets and writers like Helen Dunmore , A. S. Byatt , and Elaine Feinstein (who has written that in a time when every poet is wooed by the...
Reception Julia Ward Howe
Elaine Showalter 's biography, The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe, 2016, claimed that Howe possessed the subversive intellect of an Emily Dickinson , the political and philosophical interests of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Publishing Ruth Fainlight
RF wrote an essay about her friends Jane Bowles and Sylvia Plath , which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement and was reprinted in Crossroads, the journal of the American Poetry Society . Another...
Publishing Seamus Heaney
For the twenty-fifth anniversary of Sylvia Plath 's death, SH wrote a critical response to her poetry, The indefatigable hoof-taps (titled from Plath's poem Words), which was published this day in the TLS...
Publishing Zoë Fairbairns
Between her first and her second novel, ZF wrote a feminist updating of the myth of Iphigenia, only to have it rejected by Macmillan .
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. More Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman, 1987.
164-5
She was deeply upset by this, and not consoled...
politics Margaret Drabble
She also remembered the rise of feminism: the books by Doris Lessing , Sylvia Plath , Nell Dunn , and Edna O'Brienthat would irreversibly affect women's destiny, and the pioneering of feminist journalism by Mary Stott .
Drabble, Margaret. “1960s”. The Guardian, 26 May 2007, pp. Weekend 25 - 31.
28
Occupation Eva Figes
EF had a long stint as co-editor of this series, which includes works on Margaret Atwood , Jane Austen , Elizabeth Bowen , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Frances Burney , Willa Cather , Colette ,...
Occupation Frances Horovitz
Patrick Magee , Harvey Hall , Stevie Smith , Hugh Dickson , and Basil Jones were the other readers for the project. The poets from whose work they read included W. B. Yeats , D. H. Lawrence
Material Conditions of Writing Anne Stevenson
AS published another volume of poetry, The Other House, written as she worked on her Sylvia Plath biography.
Stevenson, Anne. The Other House. Oxford University Press, 1990.
jacket
Literary responses Anne Sexton
British reviews were mostly scathing. Despite some respectful notices, the tendency was to see Sexton as a weaker version of the confessional aspects of Sylvia Plath .
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
364
Literary responses Laura Riding
This broadcast brought a notable poetic response. Sylvia Plath wrote a poem, Little Fugue, which she annotated, on listening to Laura Riding.
qtd. in
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
400
Robert Nye soon afterwards sent a copy of his first publication...
Literary responses Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath , who began with negative comments about EB , later developed admiration for her fine originality, always surprising, never rigid, flowing, juicier than Marianne Moore who is her godmother.
qtd. in
Rees-Jones, Deryn. “Writing ELIZABETH”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, 2002, pp. 42-62.
44
Fleur Adcock notes...
Literary responses Leonora Carrington
In her 2017 assessment Marina Warner likens the text, as a testament to the horrors of psychosis and convulsive drug therapy that is split between visionary illumination and profound psychological distress, to such writing as...

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