Sylvia Plath Biography Essay, Research Paper

On October 27, 1932 in Boston s Memorial Hospital, Aurelia (Schober) Plath and her husband Otto Plath (21 years her senior), gave birth to a baby girl, which they named Sylvia. Otto Plath was a writer, whose book Bumblebees and Their Ways was published in 1934. While Sylvia was still extremely young her father began to get rather ill. He had his toe amputated, only to be followed by his foot and later on his leg. Shortly after these events another member of the Plath family was born. Warren Plath came into the world on April 27, 1935 (Sylvia was 2 + years old). When Sylvia turned eight something happened that would hang over her for the rest of her life. Her father Otto died a victim of diabetes mellitus.

According to her mother, Sylvia had always been an overachiever. After her father s death, her mother moved the family to Wellesly, Massachusetts, where Sylvia was placed in the sixth grade (two years above those her age). Throughout the rest of her grammar and high school years, Sylvia was noted for being and extremely happy and cheery person. Her first story And Summer Will Not Come Again was published in the 1950 August issue of Seventeen magazine. The following November Seventeen also published her poem Ode on a Bitten Plum .

In 1950 she was offered a scholarship to Smith College. There she continued achieving straight A s maintaining her perfect streak. She once wrote home to her mother saying:

I think I would like to call myself the girl who wanted to be God . (Plath, Letters Home)

The summer after her junior year at Smith she was offered the position of guest managing editor of Mademoiselle magazine. The same summer she went home and found out that she was denied acceptance to a Harvard writing class, this ending her perfect streak. She left a note to her family saying that she went out for a walk, and that night crawled into a crawlspace under her home and swallowed a bottle s worth of sleeping pills. She was found two days later by her brother Warren and taken to a hospital. Luckily enough still alive.

She recovered form the suicide attempt and returned to Smith graduating summa cum laude in 1955. She received a scholarship to study in Cambridge, England which she happily took. There she met and married British poet Ted Hughes. Her first book The Colossus was published in England in 1960. On April 1st of the same year Sylvia gave birth to her daughter Frieda Rebecca Hughes. Over the next years she became pregnant 2ce more. The first time having a miscarriage, and the second giving birth to her son Nicholas Farrar Hughes in January of 1962.

The following summer Ted and Sylvia split up and agreed to a legal separation. On January 14, 1963 one of her most famous works, a novel (part audiobiographical, part fiction) was published under the pen name Victoria Lucas. On February 11, 1963 Sylvia ended her life by placing her head in a gas oven in her home. Less than a year later Ariel a collection of her poems was published. Years after her death several more of her works have been published such as Crossing the Water and Winter Trees (1971), and The Collected Poems (1981), put together by her husband.