Yet her conflicts also motivated her a whirlwind marriage to the British poet Ted Hughes stoked her iconoclasm while also providing entry into the boys club of literary Britain. Her warring urges took a toll early: In 1953, following a harrowing round of electroshock therapy, she attempted suicide, an experience repurposed for her novel The Bell Jar. To make her case, the author meticulously explores Plath’s omnivorous literary interests and busy social life she was a creative writer who craved liberation as well as a high-achieving Smith College student and prim Mademoiselle magazine intern who sought solace in conformity. “Plath took herself and her desires seriously in a world that often refused to do so,” writes Clark. Even so, Clark, a longtime Plath scholar, is determined to extricate the poet from the prison of a reputation as a “witchy death-goddess” and reframe her as a serious, wide-ranging artist with prodigious expressive powers. The story of Sylvia Plath’s (1932-1963) life is inseparable from her tragic death: She committed suicide in London at 30, leaving behind a body of poetry and fiction often shaped by depression, rage, and heartbreak. A sober and detailed critical biography of one of the 20th century’s greatest and most misunderstood poets. Each chapter reads with the ease of a novel. We see Plath's early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife we witness her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes and, through clear-eyed portraits of the demonised players in the arena of her suicide, we gain a deeper understanding of her final days.įeaturing illuminating readings of Plath's poems, Red Comet brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women the world over. Refusing to read Plath's work as if her every act was a harbinger of her fate, Clark evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century as she thoroughly explores Sylvia's world.

*FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHY 2021*ĭrawing on a wealth of new material, Heather Clark brings to life the great and tragic poet, Sylvia Plath. *A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES*

*WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED PRIZE 2021* 'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' Ali Smith The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia plath heather clark