American & Canadian Literature, Women's Biography, Poetry - Literary Criticism, US & Canadian Literary Biography, General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism, Literary Figures - Women's Biography
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Overview
By examining the works and life of Sylvia Plath, Linda Wagner-Martin achieves to make the story of her growth into a consummate artist both dramatic and convincing. In her narrative of the accomplished, yet tentative American girl, Wagner-Martin brings the desire to become a writer to the center of Plath's life. By this, she humanizes Plath and brings her from the status of myth and legend to the normality of a talented woman who guides her life by her continuous attempts to achieve her literary aims.
Editorials
Library Journal
Feminist icon and patron saint of moody coffeehouse poets, Sylvia Plath has been so overexposed that it is hard to see her with fresh eyes. This book, part of a useful series that focuses on writers' working lives, builds on such works as Jacqueline Rose's The Haunting of Sylvia Plath (Harvard Univ., 1992) to remind readers that, Plath's well-known personal suffering notwithstanding, "to read autobiographically...is to dismiss the artistry Plath demands of her writing, and often achieves in it." Thus, this study marks less a paradigm shift in Plath studies than a cutting away of the inessential and a consolidation of the best that is known. Collections that already have a substantial number of Plath studies, including Wagner-Martin's own Sylvia Plath: A Biography (1987), may not wish to add yet another item to an already groaning shelf, but readers who are familiar with Plath's writing and want to know more about its personal and professional contexts would do well to begin with this succinct, commonsensical study.--David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Booknews
In this biography Wagner-Martin (English, U. North Carolina, Chapel Hill) narrates the well-known story of Plath's life through the way that story connects with American culture during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and with British culture during the last decade of Plath's life. She also examines Plath's life through her art, and uses her works, including letters and journals, to reveal to the reader an understandable progression of artistic growth and mental deterioration. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
August 14, 1999
Publisher
New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Pages
184
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780312223236