In an astonishing feat of literary detection, Malcolm examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath to create a book not about Plath's life but about her afterlife: how her estranged husband, the poet Ted Hughes, as executor of her estate, tried to serve two masters--Plath's art and his own need for privacy; and how it fell to his sister, Olwyn Hughes, as literary agent for the estate, to protect him by limiting access to Plath's work. Even as Malcolm brings her skepticism to bear on the claims of biography to present the truth about a life, a portrait of Plath emerges that gives us a sense of "knowing" this tragic poet in a way we have never known her before. She dispels forever the innocence with which most of us have approached the reading of any biography.
"The Silent Woman is one of the deepest, loveliest, and most problematic things Janet Malcolm has written. It is so subtle, so patiently analytical, and so true that it is difficult to envisage anyone writing again about Plath and Hughes. She is the cat who has licked the plate clean. It has an almost disabling authority about it, a finality like a father's advice."--James Wood, The Guardian (London)
Janet Malcolm was an author and a journalist at The New Yorker. Her books include Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey, The Crime of Sheila McGough, and The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Born in Prague, she grew up in New York. Janet Malcolm died in 2021.
View titles by Janet Malcolm
In an astonishing feat of literary detection, Malcolm examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath to create a book not about Plath's life but about her afterlife: how her estranged husband, the poet Ted Hughes, as executor of her estate, tried to serve two masters--Plath's art and his own need for privacy; and how it fell to his sister, Olwyn Hughes, as literary agent for the estate, to protect him by limiting access to Plath's work. Even as Malcolm brings her skepticism to bear on the claims of biography to present the truth about a life, a portrait of Plath emerges that gives us a sense of "knowing" this tragic poet in a way we have never known her before. She dispels forever the innocence with which most of us have approached the reading of any biography.
"The Silent Woman is one of the deepest, loveliest, and most problematic things Janet Malcolm has written. It is so subtle, so patiently analytical, and so true that it is difficult to envisage anyone writing again about Plath and Hughes. She is the cat who has licked the plate clean. It has an almost disabling authority about it, a finality like a father's advice."--James Wood, The Guardian (London)
Author
Janet Malcolm was an author and a journalist at The New Yorker. Her books include Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey, The Crime of Sheila McGough, and The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Born in Prague, she grew up in New York. Janet Malcolm died in 2021.
View titles by Janet Malcolm
