Sylvia Plath

 

She published her first poem at 8. At 30, she published The Bell Jar—a masterpiece about a young woman's mental breakdown. One month later, Sylvia Plath was dead.

In 1940, Sylvia Plath was eight years old when her father Otto died from complications of diabetes.

She wouldn't speak about him much after that. But twenty-two years later, she would write one of the most searing poems in the English language about fathers, loss, and rage:

"Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time—"

That poem, "Daddy," became one of her most famous works. It was published after her death.

Sylvia showed early signs of exceptional talent. At eight—the same year her father died—she published her first poem in the Boston Herald. By the time she reached Smith College, she was already publishing in major magazines.

On the surface, Sylvia's life looked like success. She attended Smith on scholarship. She won a guest editorship at Mademoiselle magazine in New York. She was brilliant, driven, beautiful, accomplished.

But underneath, she was struggling.

In 1953, at age 20, Sylvia attempted suicide and was hospitalized. She underwent electroconvulsive therapy. She survived, but the experience marked her profoundly—it would later become the basis for The Bell Jar.

She returned to Smith, graduated summa cum laude, won a Fulbright to Cambridge. In 1956, she met fellow poet Ted Hughes at a party. They married four months later.

For a while, it seemed like Sylvia had found stability. She and Ted wrote together, supported each other's work, moved between England and America. She gave birth to two children: Frieda in 1960, Nicholas in 1962.

But in 1961, Sylvia suffered a miscarriage. The loss devastated her, and she poured her grief into poetry—including "Parliament Hill Fields," which wrestles with the aftermath of losing a pregnancy.

Her marriage to Ted Hughes became increasingly strained. By 1962, Hughes was having an affair. The couple separated.

Sylvia moved with her two young children into a London flat. It was autumn 1962, one of the coldest winters on record in England. She had two babies, a failing marriage, limited money, and the crushing weight of depression.

And then she wrote.

In the months between October 1962 and February 1963, Sylvia Plath produced some of the most extraordinary poetry ever written in English. She wrote at a furious pace—waking at 4 AM before her children woke, writing poem after poem in white-hot bursts of creativity.

"Lady Lazarus." "Ariel." "Edge." "Daddy." "Fever 103°."

These weren't gentle poems. They were raw, angry, brilliant, terrifying. They confronted death, identity, rage, motherhood, betrayal. They stripped away every polite convention and exposed the jagged edges of a brilliant mind in crisis.

"Dying / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well."

Those lines from "Lady Lazarus" are haunting in retrospect. The poem, written in October 1962, confronts suicide with chilling directness—describing death and resurrection, the speaker rising from the ashes again and again.

Meanwhile, Sylvia was also preparing The Bell Jar for publication.

The novel, published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in January 1963, tells the story of Esther Greenwood—a talented young woman who wins a magazine internship in New York, only to spiral into depression and attempt suicide.

It was Sylvia's story, thinly veiled. The guest editorship at Mademoiselle. The mental breakdown. The electroconvulsive therapy. The slow, agonizing recovery.

The Bell Jar is a masterpiece—darkly funny, brutally honest, devastating. It captures what it feels like to be trapped inside depression, to watch yourself sink while everyone around you expects brilliance.

"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream."

One month after The Bell Jar was published, on February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath died by suicide. She was 30 years old.

She left behind two small children, a devastated family, an estranged husband, and a body of work that would secure her place as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Most of her best-known poems—"Daddy," "Lady Lazarus," "Ariel"—were published posthumously. The world didn't fully grasp the magnitude of her final creative burst until after she was gone.

Sylvia Plath's legacy is complicated. Her death overshadows her work for many readers. Her relationship with Ted Hughes remains controversial—he edited her journals after her death, and some believe he destroyed her last journal, the one covering the final months of her life.

But what's undeniable is the power of her work.

Sylvia wrote about depression, rage, motherhood, identity, and death with unflinching honesty. She refused to make her pain pretty or palatable. She wrote with razor-sharp precision about the darkest corners of human experience.

The Bell Jar has never gone out of print. It's required reading in schools worldwide. Generations of readers have found their own experiences reflected in Esther Greenwood's descent and struggle for survival.

Her poetry remains visceral, immediate, devastating. Reading "Daddy" or "Lady Lazarus" decades later still feels like touching a live wire.

Sylvia Plath published her first poem at eight years old, the same year her father died.

At thirty, she published The Bell Jar—a masterpiece about a young woman's battle with mental illness.

One month later, in the freezing London winter, she died.

She left behind two children under the age of three and some of the most powerful poetry ever written in English.

We'll never know what else Sylvia Plath might have created. What poems she would have written at forty, fifty, sixty. What else she had to say.

What we have is brilliant and heartbreaking: the work of a prodigy who fought depression from childhood, who transformed her pain into art, who wrote with searing honesty about experiences many still struggle to articulate.

Sylvia Plath didn't just write about mental illness and suffering. She wrote about rage, ambition, motherhood, identity, the crushing weight of expectations, the struggle to be seen as fully human.

She wrote with a voice that refused to be silenced—even when everything in her world was telling her to be quiet, be good, be grateful, be happy.

She published her first poem at 8. Her masterpiece at 30. And one month later, she was gone.

But her words remain—sharp, honest, unforgettable.

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Zelda Fitzgerald

 

He plagiarized her diaries for The Great Gatsby. He published her stories under his name. When she wrote her own novel, he tried to stop her. She died locked in a room during a hospital fire.

Montgomery, Alabama, July 24, 1900. Zelda Sayre was born into Southern aristocracy.

Her father, Anthony Dickinson Sayre, was a lawyer who served in the Alabama state legislature, as state senator, city judge, and ultimately as Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Her great-uncle and grandfather had both served in the U.S. Senate.

Zelda grew up privileged, beautiful, rebellious, and bored.

In high school, she smoked, drank, snuck out to meet boys, and cultivated a reputation for being wild, fearless, and attention-seeking.

She was intelligent, creative, and desperate to escape the confines of respectable Southern womanhood.

In 1918, at age 18, Zelda met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in Montgomery. He was 22, a young army officer stationed nearby.

Scott was immediately obsessed. Zelda was beautiful—blonde bob, sharp wit, fearless personality. She represented everything glamorous and modern.

They began a courtship. Scott proposed. Zelda accepted—but on the condition that he become successful first. She wasn't going to marry a poor nobody.

Scott moved to New York to make his fortune. In 1920, his first novel This Side of Paradise was published. It was a massive success.

Zelda agreed to marry him. They wed on April 3, 1920, in New York.

She was 19 years old. He was 23.

They became the most famous couple of the Jazz Age—beautiful, talented, wild, drunk, constantly in the newspapers.

Zelda jumped into fountains in her evening gown. She rode on top of taxi cabs. She danced on tables. She embodied the flapper—the modern, liberated, rebellious 1920s woman.

F. Scott called her "the first American flapper." The media agreed.

But behind the glamorous public image, the marriage was toxic from the start.

Both drank heavily. Both were unfaithful. Scott was jealous and controlling. Zelda was erratic and increasingly unhappy.

And Scott was stealing her words.

THE PLAGIARISM

F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing was brilliant. But much of it came directly from Zelda.

He copied passages from her letters and diaries—word for word—and used them in his novels.

In This Side of Paradise (1920), he lifted entire sections from Zelda's letters to him.

In The Beautiful and Damned (1922), the character Gloria Gilbert is based on Zelda, with dialogue taken directly from Zelda's own words.

Most famously, The Great Gatsby (1925) draws heavily on Zelda's observations, personality, and specific phrases.

Zelda's line: "I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

That appears in The Great Gatsby as Daisy Buchanan's famous line. It was Zelda's.

Scott didn't just draw "inspiration" from Zelda. He took her words, her insights, her observations about their life, and published them as his own.

Zelda wrote in her diary. Scott read it, copied passages, and used them in his novels.

When confronted, Scott's response was essentially: we're married, what's yours is mine.

HER OWN WRITING—PUBLISHED UNDER HIS NAME

Zelda wrote short stories. She was a talented writer with her own voice.

But magazines paid more for stories "by F. Scott Fitzgerald" than for stories by unknown authors.

So Scott published Zelda's stories under his own name, or as co-authored, to get higher fees.

Stories Zelda wrote appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, McCall's, and other magazines—credited to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The money went to their household, but the credit—the literary reputation—went to Scott.

Zelda received neither recognition nor control over her own creative output.

HER NOVEL—AND SCOTT'S ATTEMPT TO SUPPRESS IT

In 1932, while institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, Zelda wrote a novel: Save Me the Waltz.

It was semi-autobiographical, drawing on her life with Scott—their marriage, his drinking, her ballet training, their time in Paris.

When Scott found out, he was furious.

He wrote to Zelda's doctors, demanding they stop her from writing about "his" material. He argued that their marriage, their shared experiences, belonged to him as source material for his novels.

He was working on Tender is the Night (1934), which also drew on their marriage and Zelda's mental illness.

Scott insisted Zelda revise Save Me the Waltz to remove content he claimed as "his." He controlled the editing process while she was institutionalized and unable to fight back effectively.

Save Me the Waltz was published in 1932 to mixed reviews and poor sales.

It was Zelda's only published novel.

THE MENTAL ILLNESS

Throughout the 1920s, Zelda's behavior became increasingly erratic.

She drank heavily. She had affairs (including, reportedly, with French aviator Edouard Jozan in 1924, which nearly ended the marriage). She attempted suicide.

In 1930, Zelda suffered her first major breakdown. She was hospitalized in Switzerland.

For the rest of her life—18 years—Zelda was in and out of psychiatric institutions.

Her diagnoses varied: schizophrenia (most common), bipolar disorder, "hysteria."

Modern scholars debate whether Zelda was genuinely mentally ill or whether her institutionalizations were partly Scott using psychiatry to control an inconvenient, creative, rebellious wife.

Some of her "symptoms":

Wanting to pursue her own career as a dancer and writer

Resenting Scott's use of her words and experiences in his books

Drinking, affairs (which Scott also did, but wasn't institutionalized for)

Erratic behavior (which could be mental illness, or alcoholism, or abuse, or all three)

Treatments she endured:

Long-term institutionalization

Sedation

Electroshock therapy

Isolation

Whether Zelda had schizophrenia or whether she was a creative, alcoholic woman trapped in a destructive marriage and controlled through psychiatry—or both—remains debated.

What's clear: institutionalization destroyed her ability to have an independent life or career.

SCOTT'S DEATH AND ZELDA'S FINAL YEARS

F. Scott Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940, at age 44, from a heart attack (likely related to alcoholism).

By then, he and Zelda had been estranged for years. She was institutionalized; he was in Hollywood trying to revive his career.

They never divorced. But they were no longer a couple.

After Scott's death, Zelda continued living intermittently at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.

She worked on a second novel (never completed). She painted. She wrote letters.

She was in and out of the hospital—sometimes as an outpatient living nearby, sometimes institutionalized.

On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire started in Highland Hospital's kitchen.

The fire spread rapidly through the building via the dumbwaiter shaft.

Nine women died, including Zelda.

She was 47 years old.

Accounts of her death vary:

Some say she was locked in a room awaiting electroshock therapy

Others say she was sedated and unable to escape

Some say she was in a locked ward on an upper floor

What's certain: she couldn't escape. The building burned. She died.

Zelda's body was identified by her dental records. She was buried next to Scott in Rockville, Maryland.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

In 1986, Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto needed a name for the princess in his new Nintendo fantasy game.

He'd heard of Zelda Fitzgerald: "She was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name."

So he named the character Princess Zelda.

The Legend of Zelda became one of the most successful video game franchises in history.

Millions of people worldwide know the name "Zelda"—but most have no idea who Zelda Fitzgerald was.

THE LEGACY

Zelda Fitzgerald is remembered today as:

F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife

The original flapper

A tragic figure who went mad

A Jazz Age icon

But she should be remembered as:

A writer whose work was plagiarized by her husband

A talented author whose stories were published under her husband's name

An artist who tried to have her own career but was controlled and institutionalized

A woman whose novel was suppressed by her husband claiming ownership of their shared life

The Great Gatsby is considered one of the greatest American novels.

Many of its most famous lines came from Zelda's letters and diaries.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is celebrated as a literary genius.

Much of his genius came from stealing his wife's words.

Zelda wrote her own stories. Scott published them under his name for more money.

Zelda wrote a novel. Scott tried to stop her, claiming their marriage was "his" material.

Zelda wanted to be a dancer and writer. Scott had her institutionalized.

She died at 47, locked in a burning psychiatric hospital.

THE COMPLICATED TRUTH

Was Zelda mentally ill? Possibly. Her behavior was erratic, her breakdowns were real, and some form of mental illness seems likely.

Was she also a victim of her husband's control, plagiarism, and use of psychiatry as a tool of suppression? Also yes.

Both things can be true.

Zelda was:

Talented (writer, dancer, artist)

Troubled (alcoholism, erratic behavior, mental health struggles)

Trapped (in a toxic marriage, in institutions, in an era with few options for women)

Plagiarized (her words stolen and published as Scott's)

Controlled (institutionalized, prevented from publishing freely)

She exercised agency when she could—writing, painting, dancing, having affairs, living wildly.

But she was also systematically denied credit for her own creative work and ultimately lost her freedom entirely.

F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, remembered as a literary genius.

Zelda Fitzgerald died in 1948, in a locked room in a burning psychiatric hospital.

The world remembers him.

She's remembered as "his wife" or "the crazy flapper."

Remember: Zelda Fitzgerald.

She wrote stories published under her husband's name.

She wrote a novel her husband tried to suppress.

Her words appear in The Great Gatsby—without credit.

She wanted her own career. She was institutionalized instead.

She died at 47, locked in a burning hospital.

And millions know her name only because of a video game.

She deserved better.

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