Teacher Guide

The Bell Jar Lesson Plan

About the Author

Born October 27, 1932, in Boston to Aurelia Schober and Otto Plath, Sylvia Plath rose to prominence as an author when she was a young adult. Although she took her life before she could realize the full promise of her literary career, her poetry earned the ultimate measure of respect when her Collected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982, 20 years after her death.

Otto Plath taught Aurelia Schober while in her masters program at Boston University. Married in January 1932, the couple welcomed a daughter by the fall of that year. Otto, a model of a strict, authoritarian father, died complications from diabetes in 1940, when Plath was only eight-years-old. Plath struggled with the loss for...

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