‘I want my career, my children and a free supple life’: Sylvia Plath’s radical reinvention

Too often framed as a tragic icon or a victim of domesticity, the poet remade herself and her work at the start of the 60s, as a new collection will show In February 1962, Sylvia Plath dropped in on her neighbour in Devon, Rose Key, with “a plate of absolutely indigestible Black Walnut-flavored cupcakes”. She had made them from a Betty Crocker mix palmed off on her by the bank manager’s wife. Not wanting to waste it nor feed it to her own family (she was scornful of both processed food and th...

By Helen Bain