This extraordinary work--echoing Plath's own experiences as a rising writer/editor in the early 1950s--chronicles the nervous breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful, but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time.

Forty-three poems published previously in "The New Yorker", "Poetry", and "The Observer". For other editions, see Author Catalog.

Poetry about hope, loneliness, and despair captures the author's thoughts on life.

"Upon the publication of her posthumous volume of poetry, Ariel, in the mid-1960s, Sylvia Plath became a household name. Readers may be surprised to learn that the draft of Ariel left behind by Sylvia Plath when she died in 1963 is different from the volume of poetry eventually published to worldwide acclaim. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, the selection and arrangement of the poems as Sylvia Plath left them at the point of her...

Sylvia Plath churned out her final poems at the remarkable rate of two or three a day, Even more remarkable, she wrote them during one of the coldest, snowiest winters (1962-63) Londoners have ever known. Snowbound, without central heating, she and her two children spent much of their time sniffling, coughing, or running temperatures (In "Fever 103ʻ" she writes, "I have been flickering, off, on, off on. / The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.")....

Includes nineteen of Plath's stories, five pieces of journalism, and excerpts from her journals.

This extraordinary work--echoing Plath's own experiences as a rising writer/editor in the early 1950s--chronicles the nervous breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful, but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time.