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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Whose memoir depicting Sylvia Plath did Olwyn Hughes criticize relentlessly?
(a) A. Alvarez's.
(b) Ted Hughes'.
(c) Anne Stevenson's.
(d) Janet Malcolm's.

2. Where did Anne Stevenson move after college and marrying?
(a) England.
(b) Spain.
(c) Canada.
(d) Italy.

3. What did Olwyn Hughes claim was something Sylvia's mother had never addressed and, in fact, enabled for years?
(a) Lack of exercise.
(b) Mental illness.
(c) Tooth decay.
(d) Promiscuity.

4. In the first publication of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Hughes commented how in the last several years of her life, Sylvia had found ______________.
(a) The perfect editor.
(b) Her true voice as a poet.
(c) Happiness.
(d) Her lost journals.

5. What did Hughes claim Sylvia had discarded during the last years of her life in the first publication of The Journals of Sylvia Plath?
(a) Religion.
(b) Personal relationships.
(c) Prejudices.
(d) False selves.

Short Answer Questions

1. Ronald Hayman wrote in The Independent that whose biography was vindictive?

2. Janet Malcolm wrote to Olwyn Hughes in an effort to get an interview with whom in Part One: Chapter IV?

3. What poems did Plath write for the most part in the two months after Ted had left Devon?

4. How many pages did the manuscript which Anne Stevenson wrote for Penguin Books contain?

5. Anne Stevenson began a lecture describing how her and Sylvia's background as well as ideology were similar, and they had both married _________.

Short Essay Questions

1. What was Anne Stevenson's response at a meeting of the University Women's Club in London where she was being taken to task for her portrayal of Sylvia in her book?

2. What was A. Alvarez's first impression of Ted and Sylvia? How did that opinion change?

3. Which biography of Sylvia Plath did Malcolm find to be the best? What criticism did the book meet?

4. What friend of Sylvia Plath's commented negatively about her life and death in Part One: Chapter II?

5. How old were Sylvia and Ted when Sylvia died? How did she die?

6. What memoir did A. Alvarez write about Sylvia? What was Ted Hughes' response?

7. How did Janet Malcolm know Anne Stevenson in their youth? What was Malcolm's opinion of her?

8. What happened between Linda Wagner-Martin and Ted and Olwyn Hughes?

9. What did critic Ronald Hayman write about Bitter Fame?

10. What correspondence did Malcolm have with Olwyn Hughes in Part One: Chapter IV? What was illustrated through the letters?

(see the answer keys)

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