Six Sylvia Plath Episodes on the History of Literature Podcast

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was born in Boston on October 27, 1932, the daughter of a German-born professor, Otto Plath, and his student, Aurelia Schober. After her father died in 1940, Plath's family moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts, where her mother taught secretarial studies at Boston University and Plath embarked on a path that she would follow the rest of her life: she was a gifted student, she wrote poetry and stories, she won awards and prizes and scholarships – and she began to suffer from the severe depression that would ultimately lead to her death.

To learn more about Plath, join History of Literature Podcast host Jacke Wilson as he explores the life and works of Plath in conversation with Plath scholars and biographers, as well as Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club.

From the archives: 

*In this episode from 2019, the early days of the podcast, Jacke and Mike Palindrome discuss five poems that help introduce Plath to new readers of her poetry: The Applicant, Lady Lazarus, Morning Song, The Colossus, and The Stones.

In Episode 396, Jacke talks to Plath's biographer Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, about the creative partnership of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

*In Episode 397, Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter Steinberg, editors of The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill join Jacke for a discussion of the "Other Woman" in the Plath-Hughes marriage.

There are two episodes – Episode 563 and Episode 691 – in which Jacke talks to author and "serial biographer" Carl Rollyson about the life and works of Sylvia Plath.

In Episode 654, Jacke and Emily Van Duyne discuss her book Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation, which delivers a nuanced, passionate exploration of the life and work of one of the most misunderstood writers of the twentieth century.