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Sylvia Plath

(1932-1963), Poet and writer

Sitter in 5 portraits
Artist of 1 portrait
Plath was a leading writer whose 'confessional poetry', journals as well as her suicide and subsequent re-appraisal have established her status. Born in Boston, Plath moved to England with a Fulbright scholarship to study at Newnham College, Cambridge. There she met fellow poet Ted Hughes. Her first collection of poems The Colossus was published in 1960. Her marriage to Ted Hughes was troubled by his infidelity and by her own disturbed psychological history, elements of which informed her celebrated novel The Bell Jar (1963). The vicissitudes of their relationship were described in Plath's journals, and were later evoked by Hughes in his collection of poems, Birthday Letters (1998).

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Ted Hughes, by Sylvia Plath - NPG 6739

Ted Hughes

by Sylvia Plath
pen and ink, circa 1957
NPG 6739

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