Sylvia Plath





Sylvia Plath

Author profile


born
in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, The United States
October 27, 1932

died
February 11, 1963

gender
female

genre

influences
Virginia Woolf, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell


About this author

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

Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The book's protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is a bright, ambitious student at Smith College who begins to experience a mental breakdown while interning for a fashion magazine in New York. The plot parallels Plath's experience interning at Mademoiselle magazine and subsequent mental breakdown and suicide attempt.

Along with Anne Sexton, Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry initiated by Robert Lowell and W.D. Snodgrass. Despite her remarkable artistic, academic, and social success at Smith, Plath suffered from severe depre...more


Average rating: 3.97 · 257,938 ratings · 8,712 reviews · 66 distinct works · Similar authors
The Bell Jar: A Novel
3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 avg rating — 204,689 ratings — published 1963 — 128 editions
Ariel
4.27 of 5 stars 4.27 avg rating — 18,086 ratings — published 1965 — 38 editions
The Collected Poems
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4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 avg rating — 16,858 ratings — published 1981 — 15 editions
The Unabridged Journals of ...
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4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 avg rating — 6,795 ratings — published 1982 — 15 editions
The Colossus: and Other Poems
4.21 of 5 stars 4.21 avg rating — 4,328 ratings — published 1960 — 10 editions
Johnny Panic and the Bible ...
3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 avg rating — 2,010 ratings — published 1968 — 31 editions
Letters Home
4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 avg rating — 1,287 ratings — published 1975 — 15 editions
Poems
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4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 avg rating — 1,387 ratings — published 1985 — 14 editions
Crossing the Water
4.09 of 5 stars 4.09 avg rating — 795 ratings — published 1971 — 7 editions
The Journals of Sylvia Plath
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4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 496 ratings — published 1982 — 17 editions
More books by Sylvia Plath…
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”
Sylvia Plath

“Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”
Sylvia Plath

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
Sylvia Plath

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