Sylvia Plath was born October 27, 1932 in Boston Massachusetts. She was the eldest daughter of Otto and Aurelia Plath. Three years after the birth of their daughter, Otto and Aurelia welcomed a son Warren into the world. Otto was a professor at Boston University and an expert on bees. Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940 from complications due to diabetes. Sylvia was only eight years old.

      Aurelia moved the children to Wesley in 1942, where Sylvia repeated the fifth grade. She was an intelligent girl, receiving straight A’s throughout middle school and high school. Her first poem was published in the Boston Herald when she was only eight years old. In 1944, Plath began to keep a journal, from which most of today’s analysis of the poet derives from. Sylvia earned a scholarship to Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts, an exclusive all girls’ school.

     During her Smith years, Plath worked extensively on her poetic style, working her style to perfection. In 1953, her short story “Sunday at the Mintons” won her first prize in a magazine contest. Mademoiselle gave Plath a guest editorship in New York City. In July, while interning at the magazine, Sylvia received a rejection letter from Harvard. Much of this time in her life was represented in her novel The Bell Jar. On August 24, 1953, Sylvia Plath tried to commit suicide for the first time. She overdosed on sleeping pills and became unconscious, only to be found by neighbors two days later still alive. She studied at Harvard Summer School in 1954 before moving to England in the spring of 1955 to study ay Newnham College, Cambridge University.

     Sylvia Plath met Edward (Ted) Hughes, also an aspiring poet, at a party while attending Cambridge University. He kissed her, she bit him on the cheek, and the whirlwind romance began. Ted and Sylvia were married just six months after their meeting on June 16, 1956. Their marriage was followed by a trip to the America’s where Ted met Sylvia’s mom Aurelia. The Hughes spent several weeks in Cape Code. In late August they moved to Smith where Sylvia took a job in the faculty at Smith College, while Ted compiled his works for an upcoming book called “The Hawk in the Rain”. The couple would spend a total of three years in America before sailing back to England where they would make their permanent home.

      In April of 1960, Sylvia gave birth to the couple’s first child Frieda Hughes. The birth of Frieda came the same year as Plath’s first collection The Colossus and Other Poems was published. In January of 1962 Sylvia gave birth to Ted’s second child, a son Nicholas. In June of the same year, Plath became overcome with her suspicions that Ted was having extra martial affairs. Her suspicions became reality. In late September 1962, Plath and Hughes agreed on a legal separation. During this time of separation is when Sylvia composed her works that were later published in Ariel. Sylvia Plath became severely depressed. On February 11, 1963, she took her own life while her children slept in the next room in their London flat. Plath placed her head in a gas stove. She was thirty-one years old. She was laid to rest in Heptonstall. Ariel, her collection of poems edited by Ted Hughes, was published in 1965.