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
Intertextuality and Influence Ella Wheeler Wilcox
In 1951, however, the poet Louise Bogan set out to recuperate her as the founder of a whole feminine school of rather daring verse on the subject of feminine and masculine emotions.
Watts, Emily Stipes. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. University of Texas Press.
144
Emily Stipes Watts
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
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Michelene Wandor
Gardens of Eden begins by quoting Genesis and the Alphabet of Ben Sira. In the latter (source for the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife) Lilith claims equality with Adam.
Wandor, Michelene. Gardens of Eden. Journeyman.
1
The Alphabet...
Literary responses P. L. Travers
Sylvia Plath spoke a great deal about Mary Poppins, calling her the fairy godmother of her childhood.
Lawson, Valerie. Mary Poppins She Wrote. The Life of P. L. Travers, London: Aurum Press 2005. Aurum Press.
xi
Textual Production Emma Tennant
ET published what one critic described as a kind of soap-opera biography or literary thriller about Sylvia Plath , Ted Hughes , and Assia Wevill , The Ballad of Sylvia and Ted.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Gilbert, Sandra M. “Dead poet’s society”. Women’s Review of Books, Vol.
xx
, No. 6, pp. 1-4.
1, 3
Textual Production Anne Stevenson
AS retains her belief in poetry's need and capacity to reach out to elusive reality, to the ahuman, wordless world.
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
173
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
170-1
She keeps an Ongoing Anthology, a loose-leaf folder with copies of...
Literary responses Anne Stevenson
Germaine Greer praises her in Slip-Shod Sibyls for expressing consciousness of herself as a woman poet rather than the woman poet, for looking forward to the forging of a new language in which women would...
Textual Production Anne Stevenson
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.
10
It was Donald Hall , she...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Stevenson
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.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Stevenson
Essays or chapters, some of them controversial, are devoted to Sylvia Plath , Elizabeth Bishop , Eavan Boland , Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill , Dana Gioia , Seamus Heaney , Louis MacNeice , and R. S. Thomas
Textual Features Anne Stevenson
Many of these poems are occasional. Journal Entry: Ward's Island, inscribed to Lauris Edmond , recalls minus-eighteen-degree weather on the last day of a poetry festival in Toronto in February 1989. (AS describes...
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)...

Timeline

1866: The Royal Society of Arts established a scheme...

National or international item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Building item

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...

Writing climate item

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: Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate and widower of...

Writing climate item

28 October 1998

Ted Hughes , Poet Laureate and widower of Sylvia Plath , died.
The Ted Hughes Homepage. http://web.archive.org/web/20091028202301/http://www.zeta.org.au/~annskea/THHome.htm.

10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

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,...

Writing climate item

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.

Texts

Plath, Sylvia. A Winter Ship. Tragara Press, 1960.
Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. Faber and Faber.
Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. Harper and Row.
Plath, Sylvia. Ariel: The Restored Edition. Faber and Faber, 2004.
Plath, Sylvia. Collected Poems. Editor Hughes, Ted, Faber and Faber, 1981.
Plath, Sylvia. Crossing the Water. Faber and Faber.
Plath, Sylvia. Crystal Gazer and Other Poems. Rainbow Press.
Plath, Sylvia. “Ennui”. Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, Vol.
5
, No. 2.
Plath, Aurelia, and Sylvia Plath. “Introduction”. Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963, Harper and Row, 1975, pp. 3-40.
Hughes, Ted, and Sylvia Plath. “Introduction”. Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, Harper and Row, 1979, pp. 1-9.
Hughes, Ted, and Sylvia Plath. “Introduction”. Collected Poems, Faber and Faber, pp. 13-17.
Plath, Sylvia. Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Editor Hughes, Ted, Harper and Row, 1979.
Plath, Sylvia. Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963. Editor Plath, Aurelia, Harper and Row.
Plath, Sylvia. Letters of Sylvia Plath. Editors Kukil, Karen and Peter K. Steinberg, Faber and Faber, 2017.
Plath, Sylvia. Sylvia Plath’s Selected Poems. Editor Hughes, Ted, Faber and Faber.
Plath, Sylvia, and Quentin Blake. The Bed Book. Faber and Faber.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Heinemann.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Harper and Row.
Plath, Sylvia. The Colossus and Other Poems. Alfred A. Knopf, 1967.
Plath, Sylvia. The Colossus: Poems. Heinemann.
Plath, Sylvia. The Journals of Sylvia Plath. Editors Hughes, Ted and Frances McCullough, Dial.
Plath, Sylvia. Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices. Turret Books, 1968.
Plath, Sylvia. Winter Trees. Faber and Faber.