Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar (1963), a semi-autobiographical novel published one month before her death. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth person to receive this honor posthumously.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated at Smith College and Newham College, Cambridge, Plath met the poet Ted Hughs, whom she married in 1956. The couple settled permanently in England, and they had two children, a son and a daughter, before separating in 1962. She suffered from clinical depression for most of her adulthood, and lost her life to it in 1963.