“Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call.” Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the 20th century. Plath met and married British poet Ted Hughes, although the two later split. The depressive Plath was treated multiple times with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and attempted suicide in 1953.  More ECT followed and although she seemed to have made a good recovery she committed suicide in 1963 after the breakdown of her marriage to Hughes.

Many of Plath’s posthumous publications were compiled by Hughes, who became the executor of her estate. However, controversy surrounded both the estate’s management of her work’s copyright and his editing practices, especially when he revealed that he had destroyed the last journals written prior to her suicide. Her work attracted the attention of a multitude of readers, who saw in her singular verse an attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion, and obsession with death. She garnered accolades after her death for the novel The Bell Jar, and the poetry collections, Colossus and Ariel.  In 1982, Plath became the first person to win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. 

I have read a stunning biography of Plath by Heather Clarke titled Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.  It tells the tragic story of her life giving careful analysis of her work and a compassionate understanding of her relationship with Ted Hughes.  I found it thoroughly inspirational and would strongly recommend it.