In his introduction to The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-62 (1982), her husband, poet Ted Hughes, wrote that she wore "many masks" but that he believes he knew her "real self" -- "the self I had married, after all, and lived with and knew well." Yet this claim is as controversial as her biographers' claims to have given accurate accounts of her life. The controversy began soon after her suicide in 1963, when Hughes threatened a London magazine with legal action if it published the second part of A. Alvarez's account of the suicide. This incident set the tone for further dealings between the Plath estate and her biographers, who often complain that Hughes will tolerate only his version of the "real" Sylvia Plath. For Linda Wagner-Martin's Sylvia Plath: A Biography (1987), the first scholarly and critical biography, the estate's cooperation was withdrawn when the author refused to make several cuts...