Sylvia Plath

  • Sylvia Plath's son Nicholas commits suicide

    "He had been battling depression for some time," says his sister, Freida Hughes.
    By Rebecca Traister March 23, 2009

  • Sylvia and Ruth

    Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse was therapist for the most famous, and famously troubled, poet of our time. Shortly before her own death, she agreed to speak about her treatment of Sylvia Plath, and the regrets that still haunted her decades after Plath's suicide.
    By Karen Maroda November 29, 2004

  • "Her Husband"

    Diane Middlebrook talks about why the marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes was a soaring success despite his infidelity and her suicide -- and why promising to be sexually faithful is folly.
    By Kamy Wicoff November 14, 2003

  • Letters

    "No wonder people hate Americans -- we're vultures." Readers leap to the defense of Sylvia Plath's daughter.
    October 21, 2003

  • "Sylvia"

    Gwyneth Paltrow and director Christine Jeffs create a complex portrait of the legendary poet/suicide/heroine -- but this Lifetime-esque movie is too pretty and plays too safe.
    By Stephanie Zacharek October 17, 2003

  • Whose Plath is it anyway?

    England's longest-running literary soap opera enters a new chapter, as Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes' daughter wages war against ghouls, obsessives and the makers of "Sylvia" (as well as novelists like me).
    By Kate Moses October 17, 2003

  • "Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide" by Lisa Lieberman

    A new book argues that suicide can be a rational response to an intolerable world -- and says that by medicalizing suicides, we rob them of their free will.
    By Laura Miller May 13, 2003

  • Interview: Kate Moses

    Laura Miller speaks with the author of "Wintering," a novel about Sylvia Plath.
    February 18, 2003

  • A lioness in winter

    Novelist Kate Moses on her portrait of Sylvia Plath during the grim London winter when she changed literary history -- and then killed herself.
    By Laura Miller February 18, 2003

  • Sylvia Plath

    "The Bell Jar"
    By Sylvia Plath October 5, 2000

  • The Voice of the Poet: Sylvia Plath

    Plath reads her poems "Sow" and "On the Difficulty of Conjuring Up a Dryad"
    October 5, 2000

  • Sylvia Plath

    "November Graveyard" and "Black Rook in Rainy Weather"
    By Sylvia Plath October 5, 2000

  • Poetic justice

    "There could be no greater tribute"
    By . June 6, 2000

  • The real Sylvia Plath

    Her newly published, unexpurgated journals support a little-known theory that PMS drove her to suicide. Second of two parts.
    By Kate Moses June 1, 2000

  • The real Sylvia Plath

    Her newly published, unexpurgated journals reveal the poet's true demons -- and support a little-known theory about what drove her to suicide. First of two parts.
    By Kate Moses May 30, 2000

  • Tell-tale hearts

    The author of "A Prayer for the Dying" picks five tales of creeping madness.
    By Stewart O'Nan March 27, 2000

  • Janet Malcolm

    In her relentless pursuit of the truth she's left a few bodies in her wake, but isn't that part of a journalist's job?
    By Craig Seligman February 29, 2000

  • Is hell satisfied?

    In keeping with their authors' dark histories, "The Iron Giant" and other children's tales by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath tell ominous fables about ambition, despair and people's disregard for nature and one another.
    By Polly Shulman August 25, 1999

  • Traumas in adolescent life

    A judge of the Seventeen magazine fiction contest recalls what was endearing about the writers of the 400 stories she read --even the really bad ones.
    By Curtis Sittenfeld February 17, 1999

  • Ted Hughes, R.I.P.

    A brief obituary of the British poet Ted Hughes, who died Wednesday Oct. 28, and links to Salon's glowing review of his last book of poems, 'Birthday Letters.'
    By Salon Magazine October 30, 1998

  • The Good Father

    Ted Hughes' 'Birthday Letters' makes it clear, once and for all, whom his silence has been protecting all these years -- his children.
    By Kate Moses February 6, 1998

  • Bitter fame

    Ted Hughes' long silence about his life with Sylvia Plath was considered by many as a sign that he did not care. But in "Birthday Letters," his book of brilliant, evocative poems about their life together, one begins to understand, for the first time, the nature of their love, and its tragic dimensions.
    By Jay Parini February 6, 1998

  • SALON Daily Clicks: Newsreal

    From Elton John to William Blake, rhymes have been used -- and misused -- in the service of royalty.
    By Christopher Hitchens September 11, 1997
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