Sylvia Plath

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Standard Name: Plath, Sylvia
Birth Name: Sylvia Plath
Married Name: Sylvia Hughes
SP was primarily a poet, and most famously a confessional poet, although she also wrote a novel, a radio play, short stories and a book for children. She is best known for the poems she wrote in the last eighteen months that she lived. Her life story, complete with her suicide at the age of thirty, tends to overshadow her literary achievement, although critics of recent decades have made strides towards preserving her literary contribution and promoting its value.
Black-and-white photo portrait of Sylvia Plath, looking directly at the camera and seated in front of bookshelves.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Gillian Clarke
Her volume opens with a poem, Baby Sitting, which voices a guilty unwillingness to respond to a child's demands; M. Wynn Thomas thinks this a response to the angrier, rawer Morning Song which opens...
Intertextuality and Influence Ella Wheeler Wilcox
In 1951, however, the poet Louise Bogan set out to recuperate her as the founder of a whole feminine school of rather daring verse on the subject of feminine and masculine emotions.
qtd. in
Watts, Emily Stipes. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. University of Texas Press, 1977.
144
Emily Stipes Watts
Literary responses Anne Sexton
Like To Bedlam and Part Way Back before it, this was nominated for the National Book Award but did not in the end win. It brought Sexton, however, the award of a travelling scholarship from...
Literary responses P. L. Travers
Sylvia Plath spoke a great deal about Mary Poppins, calling her the fairy godmother of her childhood.
Lawson, Valerie. Mary Poppins She Wrote. The Life of P. L. Travers, London: Aurum Press 2005. Aurum Press, 2005.
xi
Literary responses Anne Sexton
British reviews were mostly scathing. Despite some respectful notices, the tendency was to see Sexton as a weaker version of the confessional aspects of Sylvia Plath .
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
364
Literary responses Laura Riding
This broadcast brought a notable poetic response. Sylvia Plath wrote a poem, Little Fugue, which she annotated, on listening to Laura Riding.
qtd. in
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
400
Robert Nye soon afterwards sent a copy of his first publication...
Literary responses Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath , who began with negative comments about EB , later developed admiration for her fine originality, always surprising, never rigid, flowing, juicier than Marianne Moore who is her godmother.
qtd. in
Rees-Jones, Deryn. “Writing ELIZABETH”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, 2002, pp. 42-62.
44
Fleur Adcock notes...
Literary responses Anne Stevenson
Germaine Greer praises her in Slip-Shod Sibyls for expressing consciousness of herself as a woman poet rather than the woman poet, for looking forward to the forging of a new language in which women would...
Literary responses Leonora Carrington
In her 2017 assessment Marina Warner likens the text, as a testament to the horrors of psychosis and convulsive drug therapy that is split between visionary illumination and profound psychological distress, to such writing as...
Literary responses Stevie Smith
Novel on Yellow Paper was an immediate critical success. Appreciation expressed in reviews by Naomi Mitchison and Rosamond Lehmann laid the foundations for SS 's friendships with these and other writers.
Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography. Faber and Faber, 1988.
125
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
A poet, Robert Nichols
Literary responses Stevie Smith
This brought her work to a large and enthusiastic audience. Sylvia Plath wrote to SS declaring herself a fan. Several poems were printed in US papers and periodicals to prepare for the American edition in...
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
FH remained continuously in print throughout the Victorian period, but her critical reputation and popularity waned before its close and died with modernism. She lingered on in popular memory as the author of popular recitation...
Literary responses Wendy Cope
Reviewer Andrew O'Hagan , however, applies a withering pen to WC in a tirade about a general style of anthology which is, he says, frivolous or aimed at the lifestyle or selfhelp markets. His complaint...
Material Conditions of Writing Anne Stevenson
AS published another volume of poetry, The Other House, written as she worked on her Sylvia Plath biography.
Stevenson, Anne. The Other House. Oxford University Press, 1990.
jacket
Occupation Eva Figes
EF had a long stint as co-editor of this series, which includes works on Margaret Atwood , Jane Austen , Elizabeth Bowen , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Frances Burney , Willa Cather , Colette ,...

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