Sylvia Plath in Context

Description

Sylvia Plath in Context brings together an exciting combination of established and emerging thinkers from a range of disciplines. The book reveals Plath's responses to the writers she reads, her interventions in the literary techniques and forms she encounters, and the wide range of cultural, personal, artistic, political, historical and geographical influences that shaped her work. Many of these essays confront the specific challenges for reading Sylvia Plath today. Others evaluate her legacy to the writers who followed her. Reaching well beyond any simple equation in which biographical cause results in literary effect, all of them argue for a body of work that emerges from Plath's deep involvement in the world she inhabits. Situating Plath's writing within a wide frame of references that reach beyond any single notion of self, this book will be a vital resource for students, scholars, instructors and researchers of Sylvia Plath.

Tracy Brain is Reader in English Literature and Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, where she runs the Ph.D. in Creative Writing programme. She is the author of The Other Sylvia Plath (2001) and co-editor of Representing Sylvia Plath (Cambridge, 2011). She has published numerous essays on Plath's work. Her interests are wide-ranging - from an essay on sewing in Jane Eyre to a book about pregnancy and birth in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel.

'Appearing in the 'In Context' series, this volume offers an excellent scholarly overview of Sylvia Plath's life, work, influence, and afterlife ... An indispensable resource that deepens understanding of Plath's work and world.' L. Simon, Choice 'A varied and well-edited selection that indicates the range of current Plath studies.' Ann Kennedy Smith, TLS