SYLVIA PLATH was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. She began publishing poems and stories at a young age and by the time she entered Smith College had won several poetry prizes. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Cambridge, England, and married British poet Ted Hughes in London in 1956. The young couple moved to the States, where Plath became an instructor at Smith College. Later, they moved back to England, where Plath continued writing poetry and wrote her novel, The Bell Jar, which was first published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in England in 1963. On February 11, 1963, Plath committed suicide. Her Collected Poems, published posthumously in 1981, won the Pulitzer Prize.

KAREN V. KUKIL is Associate Curator of Rare Books at Smith College, with particular responsibility for superervising scholarly use of the Sylvia Plath Collection.