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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. In a letter from Ted Hughes, Alvarez was excoriated for publicly airing the details of what event in his memoirs?
(a) Sylvia's suicide.
(b) Sylvia's childhood.
(c) Sylvia's marriage to Hughes.
(d) Ted's affair.

2. Anne Stevenson claimed that in her early days in England she reached for a drink much as Sylvia reached for ___________.
(a) Rescue.
(b) Suicide.
(c) Fame.
(d) Understanding.

3. When was Jacqueline Rose born?
(a) 1954.
(b) 1958.
(c) 1951.
(d) 1949.

4. In a letter to her former lover at the end of their relationship, Sylvia told him, "Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near to wanting __________."
(a) Death.
(b) Nothing.
(c) One thing.
(d) Something.

5. What did Ted Hughes called Alvarez' assertion that there was a professional jealousy between him and Sylvia?
(a) Accurate.
(b) Absurd.
(c) Partially true.
(d) Unfounded.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to a letter from Anne Stevenson in which she provided her take on Sylvia and her work, Sylvia had used poetry as a way to stage her own what?

2. Sylvia resigned from teaching when she and Ted decided to make a living on __________.

3. Who currently lived at the home Malcolm detoured past on her way to interview Clarissa Roche in Part Two: Chapter IX?

4. Sylvia's failed confrontation with whom in Paris comprised the most interesting and least tampered with entries of The Journals of Sylvia Plath?

5. In her book, Jacqueline Rose took to task what work as a cause célèbre that was concocted by the Hughes?

Short Essay Questions

1. What parallel did Malcolm make of Anne Stevenson's relationship to Olwyn Hughes?

2. What was A. Alvarez's main criticism about Anne Stevenson's biography of Sylvia?

3. What surprised Malcolm about Anne Stevenson in her similarities to Sylvia?

4. Who was Trevor Thomas? What did Malcolm learn from him?

5. When and why did Clarissa Roche begin a biography on Sylvia? What was it like?

6. When and why did Anne Stevenson and Olwyn Hughes put their differences behind them?

7. Who was Richard Sassoon? How did Sylvia know him?

8. Describe the letters that Malcolm read between Anne Stevenson and Olwyn Hughes. What was the relationship between the women like?

9. What kind of life did Anne Stevenson live? How was she similar to Sylvia Plath?

10. What did Ted Hughes write to Anne Stevenson regarding Bitter Fame?

(see the answer keys)

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