Once Hughes was dead as well as Plath, the way was clear for fictional recreation of their lives. Emma Tennant
led the way with The Ballad of Sylvia and Ted, 2001 (whose New York...
Textual Production
Adrienne Rich
Sandra M. Gilbert
edited a posthuous volume of AR
's Essential Essays. Its contents include Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Split at the Root (about her Jewishness and her father's drive to assimilation)...
Literary responses
Anne Sexton
This book brought an avalanche of invitations to read her work.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin.
385
AS
was not surprised at what she called the uniformly poor reviews, having become inured to this kind of reception.
Sexton, Anne. A Self-Portrait in Letters. Editors Sexton, Linda Gray and Lois Ames, Houghton Mifflin.
403
Some, however...
Literary responses
Emma Tennant
Critic Sandra M. Gilbert
describes this and some of ET
's other fiction as vaguely feminist.
Gilbert, Sandra M. “Dead poet’s society”. Women’s Review of Books, Vol.
xx
, No. 6, pp. 1-4.
3
Literary responses
Emma Tennant
Reviewer Sandra M. Gilbert
called Tennant a practiced and practicing sensationalist, accuses her of cashing in on the public fascination with Plath, and characterises her style in this book as purple prose and blues-ballad voyeurism...