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Sylvia Plath 1932-1963

From Encyclopedia of Creativity
Novelist and poet Author of The Colossus and Other Poems, Ariel, The Bell Jar, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees , and The Collected Poems SYLVIA PLATH (Victoria Lucas) was a creative American poet who died at the age of 30 in 1963 in England by putting her head in a gas oven. She wrote several volumes of poetry and a novel. Her work was based on her life experiences and had a confessional quality common also to the poets Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton. Plath had a severe depression when she was an undergraduate student, during which she attempted suicide. She was treated with electroconvulsive therapy and psychotherapy. Her life provides an opportunity to explore how creativity and psychiatric disorder interact throughout the course of a life history. Background Plath's father, Otto Plath, was born in 1885 in the German town of Grabow. He emigrated to the United States when he was 15 years old and earned a doctorate in 1928, specializing in the study of bees. He began teaching at Boston…
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Full text Article Plath, Sylvia [Victoria Lucas]

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
Few American poets have provoked the literary and biographical debate that P. has since her suicide, a death that validated her work as a poet yet generated commentary about her personal torment and the brilliant final poems. The extraordinary poetry written at the time of her sudden death elicited…
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Full text Article Plath, Sylvia

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American poet. Born in Boston, her German-born father was a professor of biology and her mother a teacher of English and German. In 1950 she graduated from Bradford High School and in 1953 won a scholarship to Smith College endowed by the writer Olive Higgins Prouty. A fiercely competitive student, …
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Full text Article Plath, Sylvia

From The Great American History Fact-Finder
Poet and author. Plath showed her talents at a young age when she published her first poem at age eight. Her grief over the death of her father at about the same time provided much of the inspiration for her poetic themes of trouble and loss. Her later poems were noted for their personal imagery and…
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Full text Article Plath, Sylvia

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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Full text Article Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)

From The American Women's Almanac: 500 Years of Making History
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
In a tragically foreshortened life, poet, novelist, and short-story writer Sylvia Plath became, and has remained, one of the most celebrated and controversial American postwar poets. A writer of almost unbearable intensity, Plath would open up formerly out-of-bounds poetic subjects, utilizing…
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Full text Article Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Dying, / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well. ‘Lady Lazarus’ A living doll, everywhere you look. / It can sew, it can cook, / It can talk, talk, talk… / My boy, it's your last resort. / Will you marry it, marry it, marry it. ‘The Applicant’ Out of the ash / I rise with my…
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Full text Article BABIES

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies. [Radio broadcast, March 1943] So for the mother’s sake the child wasdear,And dearer was the mother for the child. COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor ‘ Sonnet to a Friend Who Asked How I felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant…
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Full text Article FASCISM

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born. [Attr.] Wherever they pass, they [the fascists] sow death and desolation. IBÁRRURI, Dolores Speeches and Articles (1938). If modern civilisation had any meaning it was displayed in the fight against Fascism. In…
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Full text Article DEATH: DYING

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
I am dying with the help of too many physicians. [Attr.] It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens. ALLEN, Woody Without Feathers (1976). I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death. BACON, Francis The Remaines of ... Lord Verulam…
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Full text Article Plath

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary Full text Article Biographical Names
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