born Oct. 27, 1932, Boston, Mass., U.S.
died Feb. 11, 1963, London, Eng.
U.S. poet.
The daughter of an entomologist, Plath was driven to excel as a writer from an early age and published her first poem at age eight. At Smith College she made an early suicide attempt and submitted to electroshock treatment. While attending Cambridge University on a Fulbright grant, she married the poet Ted Hughes . After their separation, she committed suicide at age 30. Though she was not widely recognized in her lifetime, her reputation grew rapidly afterward; by the 1970s she was considered a major contemporary poet. Her works, often confessional and preoccupied with alienation, death, and self-destruction, include the volumes The Colossus (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Collected Poems (1981, Pulitzer Prize) and a semiautobiographical novel, The Bell Jar (1963).