Sylvia Plath
Source: Academy of American Poets
About the Author
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Born: October 27, 1932, Boston, Massachusetts
Died: February 11, 1963, London, England
Years Active: 1940-1963
Literary Movement: Confessional poetry
Helpful Video Guide
Listen to Plath Read "Daddy"
Books on Plath at Colby
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Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life examines the way Plath made herself into a writer. Close analysis of Plath's reading and apprenticeship writing both in fiction and poetry sheds considerable light on Plath's work in the late 1960s. In this updated edition there will be discussion of the aftermath of Plath's death including the publication of her Collected Poems edited by Ted Hughes which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982. Biographies of Plath will be examined along with the publication of Hughes's Birthday Letters . A chronology maps out key events and publications both in Plath's lifetime and posthumously.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 Z964 2003ISBN: 1403916535Publication Date: 2003-08-19 -
Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of Mourning by The history of Plath's reception as a writer has been beset by the language of scandal. Psychobiographical speculation, combined with the controversy surrounding the posthumous publication of her work, has dominated critical debate at the expense of her poetic achievement. In new contrast,Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of Mourning offers a theoretically informed yet extremely readable engagement with the texts themselves. The book challenges the critical tendency to see Plath's writing in `confessional' terms and draws attention to the crucial and hitherto neglected dimension of self-reflexivity. Christina Britzolakis argues that Plath developed a theatrical conception of the speaking subject which made the work ofmourning inseparable from its performance in language: she shows how Plath explored the potentialities and limits of figurative language, and also engaged with the legacy of modernism, to arrive at this distinctive mode. Interweaving close reading and theoretical reflection, Sylvia Plath and theTheatre of Mourning constructs a framework of interpretation which attends to the formal complexity of the texts without detaching them either from their historical moment or from contemporary debates about language, gender, and subjectivity.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 Z584 1999ISBN: 0198183739Publication Date: 2000-03-09 -
Sylvia Plath by Using previously unexamined archive material to explore the diversities of influence in Plath's work, the author offers a close reworking of Harold Bloom's oedipal poetics of the literary canon, breaking open the model onto a recognition of the cultural and political forces through which her poetry struggles into expression. The book brings out for the first time the powerful interplay between her poetic development and the writings of Thomas de Quincey, Lawrence, Blake, and Emily Bronte.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 Z9137 1998ISBN: 0838637353Publication Date: 1998-07-01 -
The Haunting of Sylvia Plath by Since her death in 1963 at the age of thirty, Sylvia Plath has become a strange icon---an object of intense speculation, fantasy, repulsion, and desire. Jacqueline Rose stands back from the debates and looks instead at the swirl of controversy, recognizing it as a phenomenon in itself--one with much to tell us about how a culture selects and judges writers; how we hear women's voices; and how we receive messages from, to, and about our unconscious selves.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 Z85 1992ISBN: 0674382250Publication Date: 1992-02-01 -
American Isis by On the fiftieth anniversary of her death, a startling new vision of Plath--the first to draw from the recently-opened Ted Hughes archive The life and work of Sylvia Plath has taken on the proportions of myth. Educated at Smith, she had an epically conflict-filled relationship with her mother, Aurelia. She then married the poet Ted Hughes and plunged into the sturm and drang of married life in the full glare of the world of English and American letters. Her poems were fought over, rejected, accepted and, ultimately, embraced by readers everywhere. Dead at thirty, she committed suicide by putting her head in an oven while her children slept. Her poetry collection titled Ariel became a modern classic. Her novel The Bell Jar has a fixed place on student reading lists. American Isis will be the first Plath bio benefitting from the new Ted Hughes archive at the British Library which includes forty one letters between Plath and Hughes as well as a host of unpublished papers. The Sylvia Plath Carl Rollyson brings to us in American Isis is no shrinking Violet overshadowed by Ted Hughes, she is a modern day Isis, a powerful force that embraced high and low culture to establish herself in the literary firmament.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 Z849 2013ISBN: 9780312640248Publication Date: 2013-01-29 -
Sylvia Plath by In this lively and accessible introduction to Sylvia Plath's writing, Bassnett offers a balanced view of one of the finest modern poets. Bassnett argues that there can never be any definitive version of the Plath story, but from close reading of the texts she left behind, readers can discover the excitement of her diverse work. The second edition includes three new chapters and ends with a reading of Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 Z5815 2005ISBN: 0333771273Publication Date: 2004-04-01
Important Works
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Ariel by Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it. When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide acclaim, though it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original manuscript--including handwritten notes--and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of her poem "Ariel," which provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of a beloved writer. This publication introduces a truer version of Plath's works, and will no doubt alter her legacy forever.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 A7 1965ISBN: 0060732598Publication Date: 2004-11-09 -
The Bell Jar by The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 B4 1971ISBN: 0060133562Publication Date: 1971-04-01 -
Collected Poems by This collection contains 224 poems, including a selection of her very earliest work. Also use: Crossing the River (1971), a volume that contains the poet's last works.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 A17 1981ISBN: 0060909005Publication Date: 1981-12-25 -
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by "What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.... If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine." -- Sylvia Plath, from Notebooks, February 1956 Renowned for her poetry, Sylvia Plath was also a brilliant writer of prose. This collection of short stories, essays, and diary excerpts highlights her fierce concentration on craft, the vitality of her intelligence, and the yearnings of her imaginaton. Featuring an introduction by Plath's husband, the late British poet Ted Hughes, these writings also reflect themes and images she would fully realize in her poetry. Jonny Panic and the Bible of Dreams truly showcases the talent and genius of Sylvia Plath.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 J6 2000ISBN: 0060955295Publication Date: 2000-03-01 -
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time. Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.Call Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 Z469 2000ISBN: 0385720254Publication Date: 2000-10-17 -
Winter Trees by Poetry about hope, loneliness, and despair captures the author's thoughts on lifeCall Number: Colby Miller Ground Floor Bookstacks 1 (S1) PS3566.L27 W5 1972ISBN: 0060133678Publication Date: 1972-01-01
