Sylvia Plath was a poet, novelist, short story writer and Scholastic Awards alumna (1947 & 1948). Sylvia published her first poem when she was only eight years old. She attended Smith College on a scholarship, where she would write over four hundred poems. She is best known for her poetry and for her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar.

Sylvia married British poet Ted Hughes in 1956, with whom she had two children, Frieda and Nicholas. After a long battle with depression and marital separation, she committed suicide with cooking gas on February 11, 1963 at the age

of thirty. To this day, much controversy surrounds the events of her death and the final months of her life. Sylvia went to become the first poet to posthumously win a Pulitzer Prize, for The Collected Poems.

Image: From Flavorpill: Destined for Greatness: Baby Pictures of Famous Authors