When reading her work I am marveled by the gloom and melancholy of it, as well as touched and understanding exactly what she means by it. Most of her work is very dark, as her mind was. Her life, work and depression have fascinated many people for decades. Her childhood, and early years were ideal, and did not favor those of a person who would suffer such a case of depression as hers. .
She was born on October 27, 1932, she grew up in a middle-class family, in a town near Boston. She had a brother named Warren, and parents Otto and Aurelia Plath. Her parents married and were very happy for most of their marriage. Her father Otto was a German who came to study ministry at Northwestern University, and ended up a Biology teacher at Boston University, he specialized in bees, which explains Sylvia's references in much of her poetry to a beekeeper. Her mother was a German and English teacher at Brookline High School, until she married Otto, when she became a homemaker.
Sylvia's father Otto died when she was 8, from gangrene in his toe, I've also heard that it had something to do with an undiagnosed case of diabetes as well. Sylvia often felt responsible in some sense for her father's death, though there was absolutely no reason for her to.
Sylvia excelled in everyway during most of her schooling, she was popular, smart, and very active in many things. She edited the school newspaper, and was in many clubs and activities. She won a scholarship and went to Smith College.
Her first publication was a short couplet she wrote when she was 8, published in the Boston Sunday Herald. She sent many of her works to various magazine, and newspapers, and quite a few were published. In the summer of her third year of Smith College, she was a guest editor of Mademoiselle magazine. Shortly afterward on August 24, 1953 Sylvia almost succeeded in committing suicide, by severely overdosing on sleeping pills. She was treated with intense psychotherapy and electroshock therapy, she recovered, and graduated in 1954.