Anne Sexton

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AS , American poet of the mid twentieth century, flirted for most of her adult life with the idea of killing herself. Her poems are intensely personal, centred on death, as well as on psychic pain and the dilemmas of being a woman and especially a wife. Some are re-tellings of fairy tales. She also wrote a single play, several books for children, short stories, and a novel which she never finished.
  • BirthName: Anne Gray Harvey
  • Self-constructed: Elizabeth
    AS used the name Elizabeth during psychotherapy for aspects of her personality which she treated as a different person, typing as Elizabeth in the dark so that Anne could not read what she wrote.
    Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
    55-61
  • Married: Sexton; Mrs A. M. Sexton
    AS made a significant change when she ceased submitting poems under this form of her name and began using Anne Sexton instead.
    Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
    65
Photograph of a black and white print of Anne Sexton. She is shown from the shoulders up, with her head resting on her hand, and she has jaw-length hair that is filled in with black.

Milestones

9 November 1928

Anne Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey , in Newton, Massachusetts, the youngest of three sisters.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
7-8

22 April 1960

AS issued her first collection of her poems, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, only three years after she had begun to write poetry as an adult.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
125

13 February 1969

AS gave her next volume of poetry the simple title Love Poems, after long doubt and hesitation about choosing a title.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
298
It was the first of her books produced in the atmosphere of celebrity,
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
293
according to her biographer, Middlebrook.
Sexton, Anne. A Self-Portrait in Letters. Editors Sexton, Linda Gray and Lois Ames, Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
336

4 October 1974

AS killed herself. She took herself quickly and quietly . . . . with no dramatics, no warning, no telephone calls,
Sexton, Anne. A Self-Portrait in Letters. Editors Sexton, Linda Gray and Lois Ames, Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
423
sitting in her car in the garage with the engine running, wearing her mother's fur coat.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
397

Biography

Birth and Family

9 November 1928

Anne Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey , in Newton, Massachusetts, the youngest of three sisters.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
7-8

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