A chronicler of a range of human emotions in her poetry and prose, Sylvia Plath attained full recognition for her perceptive and often searing work only after her death. Known for such pieces as The Bell Jar and Ariel, Plath explored an exhaustive range of human experiences and emotions. Her writing explored many moods, from placid, calm, hopeful poetry about her children to seething, pain-filled accounts of depression, anger, and thoughts of death.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 27, 1932, Plath grew up in a household that placed a high value on education and literature. Following the example of her mother, Aurelia, a schoolteacher, and her father, Otto, a university professor, Plath demonstrated verbal acuity at an early age, having a poem published in the Boston Traveller at age eight-and-a-half. The thoughts of death that would later pervade her work had their roots sorrowfully early in Plath’s life: at age eight, her father died fairly suddenly from a post-operative complication. She had been quite close to her father, often meeting him in the front hallway of their home as he returned from work in the evenings, and watching him grade papers at nighttime. This early experience with mortality began a lifelong concern with death and dying apparent in much of Plath’s work.

After the death of Otto Plath, the family moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts, where Sylvia completed middle and high school. An exemplary student and writer, Plath excelled in academics and extracurricular activities. Her interests in both writing and romance, which would last through her entire life, are clearly apparent during her high school days. Working as editor of her high school newspaper and a contributor to a local newspaper, Plath also had stories published in periodicals such as Seventeen and the Christian Science Monitor, and she won writing prizes from the Boston Globe and the Atlantic Monthly. Plath was duly rewarded for her dedication to both writing and academics. She was offered two scholarships (one sponsored by the novelist Olive Higgins Prouty, who would remain Plath’s benefactor and friend long after her college days) to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and would matriculate there in the fall of 1951.

Of high importance to Plath, as well, was her social standing, particularly where boys and dating were concerned. For a time, Plath recorded in her journal the number of boys who asked her out, the number of dates she accepted, and other such statistics: "Dates requested: 19 (7 turned down)." Foreshadowing patterns of behavior destined to recur, a high school-aged Plath once dated three boys simultaneously, all the time keeping a watchful eye out for someone with the potential to be her husband. For though she held beliefs and behaved in a manner that could be deemed feminist, she was often plagued with concern and preoccupation about marriage. The desire for marriage, coupled with simultaneous worries over whether the institution would pigeonhole or limit her as a writer and a person, was a constant in Plath’s life and writing. Other patterns of behavior, such as anxiety attacks, bouts of depression, and sleeplessness also became apparent during Plath’s adolescent years. To deal with these symptoms, Plath started taking sleeping pills, palliatives she would rely upon and occasionally abuse for the remainder of her life.

Plath’s years at Smith proved to be a time of great personal achievement and deeply tragic crisis. Like most college students, Plath exhibited insecurities about everything from her personal appearance to her intellectual capabilities. She was definitively successful both academically and socially: studying English Literature, she earned nearly straight A’s, being marked down only occasionally in courses such as physical education, in which she was given a B. In recognition of her literary accomplishments and potential, Plath was awarded a month-long stint as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York City. She had several close, loyal female friends and frequent dates with young men, often being asked to dances at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Inward consternation, however, drove Plath to bouts of severe anxiety and depression, as she brooded over topics ranging from academics to personal anxiety over her identity as a woman with professional aspirations. During the summer of 1953, following treatments for this depression (including electroshock therapy), Plath removed a bottle of sleeping pills from her medicine cabinet, went into a crawl space beneath a bedroom in her mother’s house, and attempted to commit suicide. Her actions led to a two-day state of unconsciousness (during which time family and friends frantically searched the town and surrounding communities) from which she was roused at a local hospital.

Placed immediately afterwards into a mental treatment center, Plath received constructive, healing therapy that allowed her to return to Smith and complete her college career. Graduating summa cum laude, completing an honors thesis entitled "The Double in Dostoevsky," elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge University, Plath seemed the very portrait of academic achievement. Her patterns of destructive behavior, however, were not entirely halted. Though not as self-castigating with regard to academic and professional achievement as she had previously been, Plath exhibited self-destructive tendencies by plunging into personal relationships that were empty and ultimately damaging. During the summer of 1954, for instance, Plath attended summer school at Harvard, where she became emotionally and physically involved with a married professor. This relationship, which ultimately ended unhappily, would set a tone for future romantic involvement.

The autumn of 1955 marked Plath’s matriculation at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she would study literature and earn another B.A. degree. But perhaps most significant during her time at Cambridge, and the rest of her life, was a chance meeting in February of that academic year. At a party in Cambridge for St. Botolph’s Review, a poetry magazine, Plath met the poet Ted Hughes. The tone of their first encounter is indicative of the stormy, tempestuous nature of their ensuing relationship and marriage. Sitting alone with Plath, Hughes kissed her after a (playfully) heated verbal exchange. In response, Plath bit him on the cheek, causing blood to run down his face. Married just five months after their initial meeting, in June of 1956, Hughes and Plath shared moments of bliss, but sorrow, anger, and distrust often defined their relationship.

After Plath completed her Cambridge B.A. in 1957, the couple moved to the United States, where Plath had been offered a teaching position at Smith College. Both attempted to maintain a regular schedule for personal writing, but circumstances often intervened. Plath found that teaching took up the majority of her time and energy, and Hughes, who was eventually given a teaching post at the University of Massachusetts, was uncomfortable in the United States and found it difficult to write. Personal and professional difficulty struck in 1958, when Plath, unhappy with teaching, left Smith. On the day of her last class, Plath found her husband with a girl, one of many cases of his marital infidelity. After her resignation from Smith, the couple moved into an apartment on Beacon Hill in Boston, and Plath took a part-time job as a secretary at Massachusetts General Hospital, which she balanced with her own writing. It is during this year that Sylvia met Robert Lowell in a seminar he taught at Boston University, an occurrence that would have a great impact on her career.

In the summer of 1959, Plath discovered that she was pregnant, and she would have the first of two children in April of the following year. During the intervening months, Plath and Hughes would move to England, largely due to the couple’s general dissatisfaction with their life in the United States. One of Plath’s most prolific periods of artistic output and success would occur during the next few years: in addition to the publication in 1960 of her first collection of poetry, The Colossus, Plath also began and completed what is perhaps her most famous work, the novel The Bell Jar. In late 1961, Plath was also awarded a grant to work on a new novel. Unfortunately, this stretch of professional success was not matched by happiness in Plath’s private life; indeed, the period from 1960 through 1963 was one of nearly continual depression for the author. During these three years, Plath suffered a miscarriage (though she did successfully deliver a healthy child a short time later), attempted suicide by driving off a road, discovered that her husband was having a long-standing affair, separated from him, and in February of 1963, would successfully commit suicide in London.

Plath’s suicide came only weeks after The Bell Jar was published under a pseudonym. By 1963, her reputation as a poet and writer was certainly established, but it was a far cry from the legend that would surround Plath after her death. Only after her suicide was the majority of her work, including several collections of poetry and volumes of letters and journals, published. A volume of Plath’s poetry, entitled Collected Poems, and published with an introduction by Hughes, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982.