In December 1962, Sylvia Plath moved into William Butler Yeats’s old house.

Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark’s meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over. The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.ĭetermined not to read Plath’s work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark presents new materials about Plath’s scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry and her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a true marriage of minds that would change the course of poetry in English.Ĭlark’s clear-eyed sympathy for Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath’s suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Nu in de winkel: Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath door Heather Clark. Each chapter reads with the ease of a novel. We see Plath's early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife we witness her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes and, through clear-eyed portraits of the demonised players in the arena of her suicide, we gain a deeper understanding of her final days.įeaturing illuminating readings of Plath's poems, Red Comet brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women the world over. Refusing to read Plath's work as if her every act was a harbinger of her fate, Clark evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century as she thoroughly explores Sylvia's world. *FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHY 2021*ĭrawing on a wealth of new material, Heather Clark brings to life the great and tragic poet, Sylvia Plath. *A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES* *WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED PRIZE 2021*

'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' Ali Smith

The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.

Red comet sylvia plath