Since Sylvia Plath's death in 1963, she has become the subject of a
constant stream of books, biographies, and articles. She has been hailed
as a groundbreaking poet for her starkly beautiful poems in Ariel and
as a brilliant forerunner of the feminist coming-of-age novel in her
semiautobiographical The Bell Jar. Each new biography has offered
insight and sources with which to measure Plath's life and influence.
Sylvia Plath Day by Day, a two-volume series, offers a distillation of
this data without the inherent bias of a narrative.
Volume 1 commences with Plath's birth in Boston in 1932, records her
response to her elementary and high school years, her entry into Smith
College, and her breakdown and suicide attempt, and ends on February 14,
1955, the day she wrote to Ruth Cohen, principal of Newnham College,
Cambridge, to accept admission as an "affiliated student at Newnham
College to read for the English Tripos."
Sylvia Plath Day by Day is for readers of all kinds with a wide
variety of interests in the woman and her work. The entries are suitable
for dipping into and can be read in a minute or an hour. Ranging over
several sources, including Plath's diaries, journals, letters, stories,
and other prose and poetry--including new material and archived material
rarely seen by readers--a fresh kaleidoscopic view of the writer
emerges.
