Sylvia Plath, come into the world in October, on the 27th of 1932, was a spectacularly talented and complicated writer. She worked as a poet, short-story author and novelist and committed suicide after a lifelong battle with depressive ideation via a kitchen oven on February 11th of 1963.

She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a professor of medical secretarial skills and an entomologist. 

She was a notably bright student; and published her first poem when she was eight in the Boston Herald. She graduated from Wellesley High School in 1950, and got her first major publication soon after, in The Christian Science Monitor. She went on to attend the prestigious women's liberal arts Smith College. Around this time, she attempted suicide; crawling under the porch of her mother's house high on sleeping pills. There was a search for the 'MISSING STUDENT' and she was feared dead until she was finally discovered in a fragile state.

She received shock treatments there for a period of six months. Her stay at the McLean Hospital and also the scholarship was paid for by the novelist Olive Higgins Prouty, who took pity on Plath, having also received mental care for a breakdown. 

She graduated College in 1955 with a thesis on Dostoyevsky's novels. She was measured at this time to have an I.Q. of an estimated 160. She met the poet Ted Hughes the next year, and married later on June 16; just four months after initially meeting. They returned to the U.S. after a honeymoon in Paris and Spain; Plath taught at Smith College. 

In 1958, they moved everything to Boston, where she had work as a receptionist in the Massachusetts General Hospital. In her free time, she'd attend seminars by the poet Robert Lowell. She made the acquaintances of fellow confessional writers Anne Sexton and George Starbuck there. 

On April 1st, 1960, their first child Freida was born. In October of the same year, her first poetry collection flew into print: The Colossus. It was a marvelous achievement, but it was soured by more news. The next year she had a miscarriage. Hughes was a thoroughly emotionally and physically abusive man, and had beat her two days before she'd had it.

On January 17th, 1962, their second child was born: Nicholas. In July, she found Hughes was having an affair. They separated.

In October of that year, she entered a flurry of creativity; a lot of her most notable poems were composed during this time. With Freida and Nicholas she worked alone in a flat at 23 Fitzroy Road, where William Butler Yeats the poet had once resided. That winter was one of the coldest British on record. It caused the pipes to freeze and her poor babes were often afflicted by it, but it culminated eventually in the slow publication and rollout of her only and autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, which was penned under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas to avoid association with her life. 

During this time, she confided in her physician John Horder; describing symptoms of "constant agitation, suicidal thoughts and inability to cope with daily life." He prescribed her an anti-depressant. He also sent her a live-in nurse to make sure she didn't act on anything. 

The assigned nurse arrived to the Plath residence on the morning of February 11th and tried to enter, but was unable. 

Eventually, with the assistance of a workman she gained entry. They discovered the body of Sylvia Plath; dead head in the kitchen's oven. The rooms between Frieda and Nicholas had been sealed carefully with towels, tape, and cloth. 

She was buried in Heptonstall's parish courtyard of St. Thomas the Apostle. The mossy stone bears the words her estranged husband picked out: 

The full name there reads 'Sylvia Plath Hughes'.

Nowadays, the last name is scratched out; worn and weary from decades of mournful fans erasing the abuse she suffered which many speculate very well contributed to her depression. Then she is better remembered, by all, as her name still standing: Sylvia Plath. 

It is full of fresh flowers; covered in a myriad of trinkets and special stones; and home to a rich assortment of pens, so even in the turning wings of death the writer may produce. R.I.P.

SNIFF OUT THE OTHERS:

{{ Source I, Source II