Sylvia Plath

“When gossip grows old,” the Polish writer Stanislaw Lec said, “it becomes myth.” In the case of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, the myth made by gossip has long obscured the art made by a couple of poets. --David Orr, Love, Your Ted, The New York Times, November 14, 2008, review of Letters of Ted Hughes, edited by Christopher Reid


Recommended reading:
by Sylvia Plath at Reading Rat


Criticism (articles, essays, reviews):

Ariel Redux: The latest chapter in the Sylvia Plath controversy, by Meghan O'Rourke, Slate, December 7, 2004, at 10:46 AM PT

The 'Ariel' Poems: A Return to Form, interview of Frieda Hughes on Morning Edition, National Public Radio, December 2, 2004

Lady Lazarus: At long last, rectifying a premature Ariel, review by Jane Yeh of Ariel: The Restored Edition, by Sylvia Plath, Village Voice, November 24-30, 2004

Ariel takes flight: Sylvia Plath's remarkable late poems were published posthumously in a collection edited by her husband, Ted Hughes. As a new facsimile edition of the original manuscript is published, their daughter Frieda Hughes defends Hughes against criticism that he interfered with Plath's legacy, The Guardian, November 13, 2004

The death, and rebirth, of Sylvia Plath, by Alex Beam, Boston Globe, September 4, 2003

A friend's memoir of days leading up to Plath's suicide, review by Carlin Romano of Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath, A Memoir, by Jillian Becker, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 7, 2003

'This is not a biography': Jacqueline Rose writes about her conflict with the Estate of Sylvia Plath, London Review of Books, August 22, 2002