Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company - A Peter Davison Book, 1989. First Printing . Trade Paperback. Very Good. 5 1/2" x 8. 413 Pages Indexed. Tight clean book with no marks or stamps. This is the first authoritative biography of the poet, a tense, precocious, New England-bred woman whose principal works were not published until after her suicide, at thhirty, in London in 1963. Her writings have branded a permanent mark on our literary consciousness. This book brings together the testimony of those who knew Plath best, many of whom have never before spoken out. Relying on published and unpublished sources, and benefiting from the unstiinting help of Plath's sister-in-law Olwyn Hughes, it explores Plath's poetry with a distincdtive freshness and concentration. Few recent literary biographies have been more widely and attentively reviewed. Contents in 12 Chapters: The Girl Who Wanted to Be God 1949, A Smith Girl 1952, The City of Spare Parts 1955, Pursuit 1956, Fire and Flower 1957, Disquieting muses 1958, Electra on Azalea Path 1959, Poem for a Birthday 1959, Ariel in the Tree 1960, Warnings 1961, The Sigma of Selfhood 1962, and Getting There 1963. Plus Epilogue, Appendices, and Sources and Notes.