Most Popular Books by Sylvia Plath

"Crossing the Water, a collection of poems written just prior to those in Ariel, . . . is of immense importance in recording [Plath's] extraordinary development. One senses on every page a voice coming into its own, the chaos of a lifetime at last getting ready to assume its final, triumphant shape." — Kirkus Reviews Sylvia Plath's extraordinary collection pushes the envelope between dark and light, between our deep passions and desires that are often in tension with our duty to family and society. Water becomes a metaphor for the surface veneer that many of us carry, but Plath explores how easily this surface can be shaken and disturbed. This landmark collection from a 20th-century literary icon features: Pivotal Early Work: Experience the extraordinary artistic development in the poems written just before her magnum opus, Ariel, offering a vital glimpse into her evolving genius. Confessional Poetry: A voice coming into its own, exploring the chaos of a lifetime as it prepares to assume its final, triumphant shape. Nature & The Self: Water, stone, and flora become haunting symbols for the fragile surface of the psyche and the deep passions churning just beneath. Feminist Themes: A stark examination of the tensions between desire and the duties of family and society, from a foundational voice in women's literature.

A biography of the troubled woman whose literary achievements were cut short by her suicide at age thirty, interspersed with examples of her poetry.

The complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath—essential reading for anyone who has been moved and fascinated by the poet's life and work. "A genuine literary event.... Plath's journals contain marvels of discovery." —The New York Times Book Review Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons.

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Pulitzer Prize winner Sylvia Plath’s complete poetic works, edited and introduced by Ted Hughes. By the time of her death on 11, February 1963, Sylvia Plath had written a large bulk of poetry. To my knowledge, she never scrapped any of her poetic efforts. With one or two exceptions, she brought every piece she worked on to some final form acceptable to her, rejecting at most the odd verse, or a false head or a false tail. Her attitude to her verse was artisan-like: if she couldn’t get a table out of the material, she was quite happy to get a chair, or even a toy. The end product for her was not so much a successful poem, as something that had temporarily exhausted her ingenuity. So this book contains not merely what verse she saved, but—after 1956—all she wrote.—Ted Hughes, from the Introduction

"Plath's voice is lucid and precise, and the poetry is deeply intense in its reading and mood. The words combined with the voice render stunning images of the inner self and the creative energy of Sylvia Plath." BooklistIncludes: Leaving Early * Mushrooms * The Surgeon at Two A.M. * The Disquieting Muses * Spinster * November Graveyard * A Plethora of Dyrads * The Lady and the Earthenware Head * On the Difficulty of Conjuring Up a Dryad * On the Decline of Oracles * The Goring * Ouija * Sculptor.

Forms a kind of autobiography of at least one aspect of Sylvia Plath's very complex life; it also documents the flowering of a bright young woman with promising talents into a full-blown genius, one of the greatest writers of this century.

The electrifying diaries that are essential reading for anyone moved and fascinated by the life and work of one of America's most acclaimed poets. Sylvia Plath began keeping a diary as a young child. By the time she was at Smith College, when this book begins, she had settled into a nearly daily routine with her journal, which was also a sourcebook for her writing. Plath once called her journal her “Sargasso,” her repository of imagination, “a litany of dreams, directives, and imperatives,” and in fact these pages contain the germs of most of her work. Plath’s ambitions as a writer were urgent and ultimately all-consuming, requiring of her a heat, a fantastic chaos, even a violence that burned straight through her. The intensity of this struggle is rendered in her journal with an unsparing clarity, revealing both the frequent desperation of her situation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons.

Sylvia Plath's first Collected Poems was published in 1981. This new volume draws on decades of research and almost doubles the content of that previous edition. The book is in two parts. It begins with the poems Plath composed in the last ten years of her life and on which her reputation is founded, and follows with those poems written in childhood and through her student years. In both sections the editors date, correct and arrange each poem chronologically, drawing on manuscripts, typescripts and related material. Critical notes help document Plath's extraordinary evolution as a poet, from her childhood compositions through to the blossoming of early ambition and into the molten core that was to shape the poems of her last few years and secure her place in literary history.

The complete edition of Sylvia Plath's prose including much unpublished and previously uncollected material, edited by Peter K. Steinberg. The Collected Prose stands alongside the Journals (2000) and the two volume Letters (2017 and 2018) to support a more complete understanding of Sylvia Plath's ambition and achievement as a writer. Expanding on the selection published as Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (1977), this volume draws together all of Sylvia Plath's shorter prose, much of which is previously uncollected and unpublished. The volume embraces her experiments with the short story and pieces of non-fiction from the 1940s through to her more polished compositions of the fifties and early sixties, including fragments of fiction as well as her journalism and book reviews. Themes and associations become apparent as the volume offers new, intertextual ways of reading across Plath's oeuvre, colouring and shading our understanding and appreciation of her extraordinary talent. From reviews of The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956 and Volume II: 1956-1963: 'Sylvia Plath was not only a great poet, she also forged some of the best prose of the twentieth century. . . she wrote letters of extraordinary wit and vivacity. Their publication is a major literary event.' The Times 'These letters are by turns poignant, revelatory, banal, hilarious and self-absorbed, documenting as they do the changing moods, ambitions and intellectual and creative development of one of the twentieth century's most celebrated poets. ' Evening Standard 'Such was the impact of [Plath's] exploration of both inner and outer landscapes in staggeringly intense, brutal and lyrical language that her loss to the literary world has been mourned ever since.' Financial Times

'Everything that passes before her eyes travels down from brain to pen with shattering clarity - 1950s New England, pre-co-ed Cambridge, pre-mass tourism Benidorm, where she and Hughes honeymooned, the birth of her son Nicholas in Devon in 1962. These and other passages are so graphic that you look up from the page surprised to find yourself back in the here and now . . . The struggle of self with self makes the Journals compelling and unique.' John Carey, Sunday Times

Sylvia Plath is one of the defining voices in twentieth-century poetry. This classic selection of her work, made by her former husband Ted Hughes, provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets. The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath's four collections Ariel , The Colossus , Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and includes many of her most-celebrated works, such as 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Wuthering Heights'.

This is the story of Young Max Nix, a seven-year-old boy in search of the perfect set of clothing. Yet Max receives more than he bargained for in the wonderful, woolly, whiskery, brand-new, mustard-yellow It-Doesn't-Matter Suit.

Sylvia Plath was, for both English and American poetry, one of the defining voices of twentieth-century, and one of the most appealing: few other poets have introduced as many new readers to poetry. Though she published just one collection in her lifetime, The Colossus, and a novel, The Bell Jar, it was following her death in 1963 that her work began to garner the wider audience that it deserved. The manuscript that she left behind, Ariel, was published in 1965 under the editorship of her former husband, Ted Hughes, as were two later volumes, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971, which helped to make Sylvia Plath a household name. Hughes's careful curation of Plath's work extended to a Collected Poems and a Selected Poems in the 1980s, which remain in print today and stand testimony to the 'profound respect' that Frieda Hughes said her father had for her mother's work. It was not until the publication of a 'restored' Ariel in 2004 that readers were able to appraise Plath's own selection and arrangement of her work. This edition of the poems, chosen by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, offers a fresh selection of Sylvia Plath's poetry to stand in parallel to the existing editions. Introduced with an inviting preface, the book is essential reading for those new to and already familiar with the work of this most extraordinary poet.

Illuminating, incisive and entertaining insights into the writing life from one of our most renowned authors. Sylvia Plath always knew that she wanted to be a writer and she always wrote. She interrogated, both lightly and acutely, what the practice of writing means: how to see afresh whether you're looking at a thistle or an umbrella; the what it is to want so much to 'live, love and say it well in good sentences ...', and how she doesn't think poems 'should be all that chaste' but is unwilling to write one that includes mention of a toothbrush. The poet Maura Dooley has brought together excerpts from across Plath's journals, letters, poems and prose as one poet mapping their journey through another poet's observations and reflections on the writing life.