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The Bell Jar Author Biography

Remembered today for her horrifying death as well as for her impressive body of literature, Sylvia Plath was born on 27 October 1932 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to Aurelia Schober and Otto Emil Plath. In 1940, her father, a professor of entomology, died, an event that left lasting psychological scars on Plath. References to her dead fa- ¦ ther permeate Plath's work, including The Colossus and The Bell Jar.

In 1942, Aurelia Plath found work teaching in a medical/secretarial program at Boston University The family settled in Wellesley, Massachusetts An excellent student, Plath showed enormous determination to get her fiction published. She submitted forty-five pieces to the magazine Seventeen before they published her story, "And Summer Will Not Come Again" in 1950.

At Smith College, she wrote poetry, was elected to various class offices, and received prizes for both her prose and poetry. That this gifted woman had...
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