Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
This broadcast brought a notable poetic response. Sylvia Plath
wrote a poem, Little Fugue, which she annotated, on listening to Laura Riding.
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books.
400
Robert Nye
soon afterwards sent a copy of his first publication...
Textual Features
Michèle Roberts
The contents of this volume span a range of genres and moods. poems about places or natural objects observe with precision; love poems are often ambivalent: won't you make my blood / jump? won't you...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Carol Rumens
Its tributes to earlier women poets are grounded in Portrait of the Poet as a Little Girl (a belated, oblique answer to James Joyce
), which concludes on the patrilineal prize / which she, disarmed...
Like To Bedlam and Part Way Back before it, this was nominated for the National Book Award but did not in the end win. It brought Sexton, however, the award of a travelling scholarship from...
Textual Features
Anne Sexton
AS
took the title for this volume from the novel Herzog, by Saul Bellow
, whose writing she deeply admired: Live or die, but don't poison everything.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin.
162
Its contents included Sylvia
's Death...
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.
364
Literary responses
Stevie Smith
This brought her work to a large and enthusiastic audience. Sylvia Plath
wrote to SS
declaring herself a fan. Several poems were printed in US papers and periodicals to prepare for the American edition in...
Textual Production
Ali Smith
In addition to these collaborative works, AS
has published an anthology of her own favourite texts, those she sees as essential to her development as a writer. Published twice under different titles—The Reader (2006)...
Literary responses
Stevie Smith
Novel on Yellow Paper was an immediate critical success. Appreciation expressed in reviews by Naomi Mitchison
and Rosamond Lehmann
laid the foundations for SS
's friendships with these and other writers.
Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography. Faber and Faber.
125
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
AS
's life of Sylvia Plath
, Bitter Fame, was published by Viking
in London and Houghton Mifflin
in Boston; even before it appeared it was immensely controversial.
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
29-33
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.
jacket
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.
9: 279
American boyfriends tried to dissuade her, but she ignored them boneheadedly.
Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series. Gale Research.
9: 279
She...
Textual Production
Anne Stevenson
During her first marriage AS
tried to write a novel, but found (like Sylvia Plath
's heroine in The Bell Jar) that she had nothing to say.
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
This book attempts to tell the story of Plath
's marital sitation without taking sides, and not to let the knowledge of her later fame colour the telling of her story in its own day.
