Sylvia Plath

About Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an internationally known American poet, novelist, and short-story writer who lived from 1932 to 1963. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she displayed an early talent for writing, publishing her first poem at age eight. She attended Smith College and later earned a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England. In 1956, Plath married the British poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had two children. She published her first poetry collection, The Colossus and Other Poems, in 1960, followed by her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in early 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Plath struggled with severe clinical depression throughout her adult life and died by suicide in London at thirty years old. Renowned as a pioneer of confessional poetry, her posthumously published collection Ariel cemented her literary legacy. In 1982, Plath became the first person to be posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Collected Poems.

Based on publicly available information.