Product Description

Sylvia Plath's correspondence, addressed chiefly to her mother, from her time at Smith College in the early 1950s up to her suicide in London in February 1963. In addition to her capacity for domestic and writerly happiness, these letters also hint at her potential for deep despair.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78572 in Books
• Published on: 1992-04-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review
"Finally now, young women writers can cease to identify with the apparent self-destroyer in Sylvia Plath and begin to understand the forces she had to reckon with." -- --Adrienne Rich

"One is left willing to bestow on Sylvia Plath the compassion and charity she so relentlessly and fatally denied herself." -- --Saturday Review

About the Author
To this day, Sylvia Plath's writings continue to inspire and provoke. Her only published novel, The Bell Jar, remains a classic of American literature, and The Colossus (1960), Ariel (1965), Crossing the Water (1971), Winter Trees (1971), and The Collected Poems (1981) have placed her among this century's essential American poets.

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, the first child of Aurelia and Otto Plath. When Sylvia was eight years old, her father died--an event that would haunt her remaining years--and the family moved to the college town of Wellesley. By high school, Plath's talents were firmly established; in fact, her first published poem had appeared when she was eight. In 1950, she entered Smith College, where she excelled academically and continued to write; and in 1951 she won Mademoiselle magazine's fiction contest. Her experiences during the summer of 1953--as a guest editor at Mademoiselle in New York City and in deepening depression back home--provided the basis for The Bell Jar. Near that summer's end, Plath nearly succeeded in killing herself. After therapy and electroshock, however, she resumed her academic and literary endeavors. Plath graduated from Smith in 1955 and, as a Fulbright Scholar, entered Newnham College, in Cambridge, England, where she met the British poet, Ted Hughes. They were married a year later. After a two-year tenure on the Smith College faculty and a brief stint in Boston, Plath and Hughes returned to England, where their two children were born.

Plath had been successful in placing poems in several prestigious magazines, but suffered repeated rejection in her attempts to place a first book. The Colossus appeared in England, however, in the fall of 1960, and the publisher, William Heinemann, also bought her first novel. By June 1962, she had begun the poems that eventually appeared in Ariel. Later that year, separated from Hughes, Plath immersed herself in caring for her children, completing The Bell Jar, and writing poems at a breathtaking pace.

A few days before Christmas 1962, she moved with the children to a London flat. By the time The Bell Jar was published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, in early 1963, she was in desperate circumstances. Her marriage was over, she and her children were ill, and the winter was the coldest in a century. Early on the morning of February 11, Plath turned on the cooking gas and killed herself.

Plath was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for her Collected Poems.

Customer Reviews

Sylvia Plath-An insight
This book gives an great insight into the mind of one the most incredible writers ever. All her thoughts and feelings are expressed so wonderfully. Even in her letters she keeps the same dry wit and rage that draws so many people to her. She was an incredible writer and this is just another example of her fine work.

Engrossing.
After reading The Bell Jar I wanted to know everything I could possibly know about Sylvia Plath. I'd never read an author's journal or letters before, and I loved it! (It was one of my top ten reads of 2008.)

I love all the technology available to us today, but e-mail has certainly killed the magic of letters. This book has something like 1,000 letters from Sylvia, mostly to her mother. And yes, they are edited; and while at times you could certainly see Sylvia's mother making sure everybody knows she was a good mother, they are edited very well.

The letters read like narrative, taking you through a really interesting life story. Anyone interested in Plath should make this a must read. Between this and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, I found Letters Home to be much faster paced and overall engrossing.

One day I may go back and read Letters Home and the journals simultaneously to see the differences in the letters vs. the journals during the same periods.

I highly recommend this book. Whether you are a fan of Plath's or just interested in the pre-techology life of a student, lover, wife, mother, you can't help but be captivated.

A Must
From Aurelia Plath's intimate introduction and comments throughout to Sylvia's personal words and insights, I can't praise this book enough. Sylvia's growth as a writer and a woman are charted here. Her relationship with Mrs. Prouty is more intimately revealed as well. A must!