Despite her success as a writer, Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) lived a life full of depression and despair. Born in Boston, Plath published poems even as a child and won many academic and literary awards. Her interest in writing continued at Smith College. During her junior year she won a prize for fiction at Mademoiselle magazine and spent that summer as a guest editor in the magazine's New York office. After graduating summa cum laude from Smith, Plath accepted a Fulbright Scholarship to Cambridge University in England, where she met and married poet Ted Hughes. They had two children.

The Colossus (1960), the only volume of poetry published during Plath's short life, is intensely personal. Ariel (1968), her finest book of verse, was written in the last months of her life. Other volumes include Crossing the Water (1971) and Winter Trees (1972), which reveal an objective detachment from life and a growing fascination with death. Her novel, The Bell Jar (1963), chronicles the nervous breakdown she suffered while a college student. Plath committed suicide at the age of thirty, and most of her work has been published posthumously.