Sylvia Plath 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, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honor posthumously.
Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Sylvia is a 2003 British biographical drama film directed by Christine Jeffs and starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, and Michael Gambon. It tells a story based on the real-life romance between prominent poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The film begins with their meeting at Cambridge in 1956 and ends with Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963.
Ariel was the second book of Sylvia Plath's poetry to be published. It was first released in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. The poems of Ariel, with their free-flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from Plath's earlier Colossus poems.
Assia Esther Wevill was a German-Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, via Italy, then later England, where she had an affair with the English poet Ted Hughes. While she was a successful advertising copywriter and a talented translator of poetry, she is mainly remembered in the context of her relationship with Sylvia Plath and Hughes.
Birthday Letters is a 1998 poetry collection by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes' death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 1999. This collection of eighty-eight poems is widely considered to be Hughes's most explicit response to the suicide of his estranged wife Sylvia Plath in 1963, and to their widely discussed, politicized, and "explosive" marriage. Prior to Birthday Letters, Hughes had only explicitly mentioned Plath once before, in a poem titled 'Heptonstall Cemetery' from his 1979 collection Remains of Elmet.
"Daddy" is a poem written by American confessional poet Sylvia Plath. The poem was composed on October 12, 1962, one month after her separation from Ted Hughes and four months before her death. It was published posthumously in Ariel during 1965 alongside many other of her final poems, such as "Tulips" and "Lady Lazarus". It has subsequently become a widely anthologized poem in American literature.
Erica Wagner is an American author and critic, living in London, England. She is former literary editor of The Times.
Court Green is a house in North Tawton, Devon, England. It was the home the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath moved to in late August 1961.
"Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea" is a poem written by Sylvia Plath that was first published in 1955, the year she graduated from Smith College summa cum laude. An abstract poem about an absent lover, it uses clear, vivid language to describe seaside scenery, with "a grim insistence" on reality rather than romance and imagination.
Nicholas Farrar Hughes was a British and American fisheries biologist known as an expert in stream salmonid ecology. Hughes was the son of the American poet Sylvia Plath and English poet Ted Hughes, and the younger brother of artist and poet Frieda Hughes. He and his sister were public figures as small children due to the circumstances of their mother's widely publicized death by suicide.
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) was an American author and poet. Plath is primarily known for her poetry, but earned her greatest reputation for her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, published pseudonymously weeks before her death.
"Ariel" is a poem written by the American poet Sylvia Plath. It was written on her thirtieth birthday, October 27, 1962, and published posthumously in the collection Ariel in 1965. Despite the poem's ambiguity, it is understood to describe an early morning horse-ride towards the rising sun. Scholars and literary critics have applied various methods of interpretation to "Ariel".
The Colossus and Other Poems is a poetry collection by American poet Sylvia Plath, first published by Heinemann, in 1960. It is the only volume of poetry by Plath that was published before her death in 1963.
"The Blue Flannel Suit" is a poem by Ted Hughes published in 1998 in his book Birthday Letters. The 30th of 88 poems in the collection, "The Blue Flannel Suit" is one of several in the series explicitly about his wife Sylvia Plath. Prior to the series, Hughes had rarely discussed their relationship or Plath's death or responded to claims by some critics that he bore some responsibility for her state of mind and death.
“The Disquieting Muses” is a poem by Sylvia Plath first appearing in the 1960 collection The Colossus and Other Poems published by William Heinemann, Ltd.
"Death & Co" is a poem by Sylvia Plath, dated 19 April, 1962, and first appearing in the collection Ariel published by Faber & Faber in 1965, and by Harper & Row in 1966.
“Elm” is a poem by Sylvia Plath, dated 19 April, 1962, first appearing in the collection Ariel published by Faber & Faber in 1965, and by Harper & Row in 1966.
"Fever 103°" is a poem by Sylvia Plath, dated 20 October, 1962, and first appearing in the collection Ariel published by Faber & Faber in 1965, and by Harper & Row in 1966.
“The Moon and the Yew Tree” is a poem by Sylvia Plath, dated 22 October, 1961, and first appearing in the collection Ariel published by Faber and Faber in 1965, and by Harper & Row in 1966.