American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath

A stunning new perspective on the icon Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath's life and work have taken on legendary proportions. Educated at Smith College, a private women's arts college, the American writer maintained a conflicted relationship with her mother, Aurelia, and, after marrying poet Ted Hughes, was swept up in the whirlwind of literary acclaim. Her poems were disputed, rejected, accepted, and ultimately acclaimed by readers around the world. At the age of 30, Sylvia committed suicide by burying her head in an oven while her children slept upstairs, in rooms she had sealed against poison gas. Ariel, a collection of poems written at a blistering pace during her final months, has become a modern classic. Her only novel, The Bell Jar, has become part of the literary canon, appearing on reading lists for students in several countries. In this biography—the first to utilize materials newly integrated into the Ted Hughes archives at the British Library—Carl Rollyson introduces us to a powerful Sylvia Plath, who embraced both low and high culture to become the Marilyn Monroe of contemporary literature.