Anne Sexton (1928–1974) made a significant contribution to American poetry, though she did not begin writing until she was twenty-eight years old. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Sexton attended boarding school and Garland Junior College before marrying Alfred Sexton II in 1948. She began writing in 1956 after attending a class taught by Robert Lowell at Boston University.

In her work, Sexton presented painful memories and experiences in intensely personal poetry of a kind referred to by critics as confessional. Her first collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1959), described her stay in a mental institution and her recovery from an emotional breakdown. In 1967, Sexton received the Pulitzer Prize for her collection Live or Die. Her shockingly personal poems brought her literary fame but received mixed reactions from critics. Transformations (1971) is a collection of her frightening, macabre retellings of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. Unfortunately, Sexton was plagued by depression and tragically ended her life on October 4, 1974. Two volumes of her poetry and a collection of her personal letters were published after her death by her daughter Linda.