Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) Born to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath published her first poem when she was eight. Sensitive, intelligent, compelled toward perfection in everything she attempted, she was, on the surface, a model daughter, popular in school, earning straight A's, winning the best prizes. By the time she entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1950 she already had an impressive list of publications, and while at Smith she wrote over …showed first 75 words of 403 total…

…showed last 75 words of 403 total…and eight in the morning, before the children woke, sometimes finishing a poem a day. In her last poems, she seemed not to be herself. It was almost as if an evilness of some sort had taken over her body and mind, which then affected the manner in which she wrote. On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath, one of America's finest poets of all time, successfully took her own life using cooking gas at the age of 30.