HOME » WORKSHOPS » POETRY » SYLVIA PLATH, "MORNING SONG" » READING

Sylvia Plath, "Morning Song"

BIOGRAPHY

Reading » Re-Reading » Explorations

[From The Norton Introduction to Literature]

(1932–1963)

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston; her father, a Polish immigrant, died when she was eight. After graduating from Smith College, Plath attended Cambridge University on a Fulbright scholarship, and there she met and married the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had two children. As she documented in her novel The Bell Jar (1963), in 1953—between her junior and senior years of college—Plath became seriously depressed, attempted suicide, and was hospitalized. In 1963, the break-up of her marriage led to another suicide attempt, this time successful. Plath has attained cult status as much for her poems as for her “martyrdom” to art and life. In addition to her first volume of poetry, The Colossus (1960), Plath's work has been collected in Ariel (1966), Crossing the Water (1971), and Winter Trees (1972). Her selected letters were published in 1975; her expurgated journals, in 1983; and her unabridged journals, in 2000.

Icon Directory
In The Portable Intro to Literature
In The Seagull Reader
In Portable & The Seagull Reader