Sylvia Plath, a precocious enigma of the 1960s, battled perfectionism and precipitous mood swings while pursuing a career as a teacher and poet. She was born in Jamaica Plain, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, on October 27, 1932. In early childhood, she lived in Winthrop on Massachusetts Bay. Left fatherless at age 8, she lived with her mother's parents and attended school in Winthrop and college at Wellesley. She later acknowledged uncertainty about her father through bee imagery in "Stings," "The Swarm," "The Bee Meeting," and other poems.
After publishing the story "And Summer Will Not Come Again" in Seventeen magazine and the poem "Bitter Strawberries" in Christian Science Monitor in 1950, Plath earned a scholarship to Smith College and majored in English literature and composition. She published additional poems in Harper's. A subsequent story, "Sunday at the Mintons," won a Mademoiselle scholarship, a position on the magazine's college board, and a summer internship in New York.
In August 1953, Plath attempted suicide. She underwent electroconvulsive therapy at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. She returned to Smith in February 1954 and earned a B.A. in English, graduating summa cum laude with membership in Phi Beta Kappa. She subsequently studied English literature as a Fulbright scholar at Newnham College, Cambridge, and then married British poet Ted Hughes in June 1956.
