Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Sylvia was born on October 23, 1932 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts to her mother, Emile Plath and her father, Aurelia Schober Plath. Sylvia attended Smith College where in her junior year she began to make attempts to take her own life. Following these attempts she was briefly committed to a mental institution where she seemed to make a full recovery. She graduated from Smith College with honours in 1955. She then went on to go to Cambridge University where she pursued poetry. While attending Cambridge she met an English poet named Ted Hughes who she later married on June 16, 1956. In 1957 they both began working in the U.S.A. where Sylvia taught at her former College. Sylvia became pregnant and they decided to move to the U.K.. Plath published her 1st collection of poetry, The Colossus, in 1961. She wrote many other books while she was alive, including some childrens books. On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath took her own life. After leaving cookies and milk out for her children and sealing their rooms off with tape, Sylvia placed her head in her oven with the gas turned on. There have been debates on whether or not she meant to kill herself or not. Sylvia wrote journals from the age of 11 until the day she died. Her journals starting from her 1st year at Smith were published in 1980 in a book called "The Journals of Sylvia Plath".