54 Facts About Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer.

Sylvia Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel, as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963.

Sylvia Plath married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England.

Sylvia Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and was treated multiple times with electroconvulsive therapy.

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27,1932, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Sylvia Plath's mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, was a second-generation American of Austrian descent, and her father, Otto Plath, was from Grabow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany.

Sylvia Plath's father was an entomologist and a professor of biology at Boston University who authored a book about bumblebees.

Otto Sylvia Plath died on November 5,1940, a week and a half after Sylvia Plath's eighth birthday, of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes.

Sylvia Plath had become ill shortly after a close friend died of lung cancer.

Sylvia Plath's father was buried in Winthrop Cemetery, in Massachusetts.

Sylvia Plath attended Bradford Senior High School in Wellesley, graduating in 1950.

In 1950, Sylvia Plath attended Smith College, a private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

Sylvia Plath hung around the White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel for two days, hoping to meet Thomas, but he was already on his way home.

Sylvia Plath survived this first suicide attempt, later writing that she "blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion".

Sylvia Plath spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and insulin shock treatment under the care of Ruth Beuscher.

Sylvia Plath's stay at McLean Hospital and her Smith Scholarship were paid for by Olive Higgins Prouty, who had successfully recovered from a mental breakdown herself.

Sylvia Plath seemed to make a good recovery and returned to college.

Sylvia Plath was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society.

Sylvia Plath obtained a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Newnham College, one of the two women-only colleges of the University of Cambridge in England, where she continued actively writing poetry and publishing her work in the student newspaper Varsity.

Sylvia Plath spent her first year winter and spring holidays traveling around Europe.

Sylvia Plath described Hughes as "a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer" with "a voice like the thunder of God".

Sylvia Plath found it difficult to both teach and have enough time and energy to write, and in the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston.

Sylvia Plath took a job as a receptionist in the psychiatric unit of Massachusetts General Hospital and, in the evening sat in on creative writing seminars given by poet Robert Lowell.

Sylvia Plath began to consider herself as a more serious, focused poet and short story writer.

Sylvia Plath says that it was here that she learned "to be true to my own weirdnesses", but she remained anxious about writing confessionally, from deeply personal and private material.

In June 1962, Sylvia Plath had a car accident which she described as one of many suicide attempts.

In July 1962, Sylvia Plath discovered Hughes had been having an affair with Assia Wevill; in September, Sylvia Plath and Hughes separated.

Sylvia Plath was pleased by this fact and considered it a good omen.

Sylvia Plath's depression returned but she completed the rest of her poetry collection, which would be published after her death.

In January1963, Sylvia Plath spoke with John Horder, her general practitioner, and a close friend who lived near her.

Sylvia Plath described the current depressive episode she was experiencing; it had been ongoing for six or seven months.

Sylvia Plath struggled with insomnia, taking medication at night to induce sleep, and frequently woke up early.

Sylvia Plath left a note reading "Call Dr Horder", including the doctor's phone number.

On March 16,2009, Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath's son, hanged himself at his home in Fairbanks, Alaska, following a history of depression.

Sylvia Plath wrote poetry from the age of eight, her first poem appearing in the Boston Traveller.

In fact Sylvia Plath desired much of her life to write prose and stories, and she felt that poetry was an aside.

Sylvia Plath described her novel as "an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past".

Sylvia Plath used the novel to highlight the issue of women in the workforce during the 1950s.

Sylvia Plath strongly believed in women's abilities to be writers and editors, while society forced them to fulfill secretarial roles.

In 1963, after The Bell Jar was published, Sylvia Plath began working on another literary work, titled Double Exposure, which was never published.

The posthumous publication of Ariel in 1965 precipitated Sylvia Plath's rise to fame.

Sylvia Plath's poems are full of references and images that seem impenetrable at this distance, but which could mostly be explained in footnotes by a scholar with full access to the details of her life.

Sylvia Plath told the story of her first suicide in sweet and loving detail, and her description in The Bell Jar is just that same story.

Sylvia Plath's letters were published in 1975, edited and selected by her mother Aurelia Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia Plath began keeping a diary from the age of 11 and continued doing so until her suicide.

In 1982, when Smith College acquired Sylvia Plath's remaining journals, Hughes sealed two of them until February 11,2013, the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath's death.

Sylvia Plath has been condemned repeatedly for burning Plath's last journal, saying he "did not want her children to have to read it".

Sylvia Plath has been accused of attempting to control the estate for his own ends, although royalties from Plath's poetry were placed into a trust account for their two children, Frieda and Nicholas.

In general, my refusal to have anything to do with the Sylvia Plath Fantasia has been regarded as an attempt to suppress Free Speech.

The Fantasia about Sylvia Plath is more needed than the facts.

In October 2015, the BBC Two documentary Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death examined Hughes' life and work; it included audio recordings of Sylvia Plath reciting her own poetry.

Some in the feminist movement saw Sylvia Plath as speaking for their experience, as a "symbol of blighted female genius".

Sylvia Plath's voice is heard in a BBC documentary about her life, recorded in London in late 1962.

Sylvia Plath accused the "peanut crunching" public of wanting to be titillated by the family's tragedies.