Sylvia Plath

Ariel is Plath's posthumous poetry collection, first published in 1965. It includes many of the intense late poems that made her a defining figure in confessional poetry.

The Bell Jar, published in 1963 under the name Victoria Lucas, draws on parts of Plath's own experience with New York magazine work and psychiatric treatment. It is still a novel, centered on the fictional Esther Greenwood.

Plath received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. The award came nearly two decades after her death in 1963 and helped confirm her central place in 20th-century American poetry.

Plath married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. Their relationship, separation, and Hughes's later editorial role in her posthumous publications remain major parts of how readers discuss her work.