Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Sylvia Plath Collection, 1965, Accession # 11197,-a, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was transferred from Rare Books on June 30, 1995.

Biographical/Historical Information

Sylvia Plath, born October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, was educated at Smith College, B.A., 1955; Harvard University, 1954; and, Newham College, Cambridge, Fulbright Scholar, 1955-1957, M.A., 1957. She taught English at Smith College, 1957-1958; lived in Boston, 1958-1959; Yaddo and London, 1959, before settling in Devon, England. Awards and honors include: Irene Glascock Poetry Prize, Mount Holyoke College, 1955; Bess Hokin Award, Poetry Magazine, 1957; first prize in Cheltenham Festival, 1961; Eugene F. Saxon fellowship, 1961; and, Pulitzer Prize in poetry, 1982, for Collected Poems . Works of poetry include: The Colossus and American Poetry Now, published prior to her death; and, posthumous works, Uncollected Works, Ariel, Wreath for a Bridal, Crossing the Water: Transitional Poems, Collected Poems, and Sylvia Plath's Selected Poems . She was also a contributor to several magazines, including Christian Science Monitor, Harper's, Nation, Atlantic, and Poetry .

Plath committed suicide on February 11, 1963, in London, England. She was already becoming a legend at the time of her death. She had consistently courted death throughout her life. Critics say that in Ariel Plath made poetry and death inseparable, and that the poems read as though they were written posthumously. She was influenced by such writers as D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Dostoevski, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Theodore Roethke, Emily Dickinson, and later by Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton. She has been linked with the latter as a member of the so-called confessional school of poetry. [See online Contemporary Authors for more information on the life and works of Sylvia Plath].

Anne (Harvey) Sexton, born November 9, 1928, in Newton, Massachusetts, began her career as a fashion model, 1950-1951, and later went into the education field, becoming a teacher at Wayland High School, Wayland, Massachusetts, 1967-1968; lecturer in creative writing, 1970-1971, and professor of creative writing, 1972-1974, at Boston University; scholar, Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, 1961-1963; and, Crenshaw Professor of Literature, Colgate University, 1972. She also gave numerous poetry readings at colleges and universities. She was a member of the Poetry Society of America, Royal Society of Literature, New England Poetry Club, and Phi Beta Kappa. Awards and honors include: Robert Frost fellowship at Bread Loaf Writers Conference, 1959; Levinson Prize, Poetry, 1962; American Academy of Arts and Letters traveling fellowship, 1963-1964; Guggenheim fellowship, 1969; Litt.D., Tufts University, 1970, Regis College, 1971, and Fairfield University, 1971. Works of poetry include To Bedlam and Part Way Back, All My Pretty Ones, Selected Poems, Live or Die, Love Poems, Transformations, The Death Notebooks, and The Awful Rowing toward God .