Product Description
Red Comet
Author: Heather Clark
Format: Paperback
The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.
'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' — Ali Smith
*Winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize 2021*
*A Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph and the Times*
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography 2021*
Drawing on a wealth of new material, Heather Clark brings to life the great and tragic poet, Sylvia Plath. Refusing to read Plath's work as if her every act was a harbinger of her fate, Clark evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century as she thoroughly explores Sylvia's world.
We see Plath's early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; we witness her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes; and, through clear-eyed portraits of the demonised players in the arena of her suicide, we gain a deeper understanding of her final days.
Featuring illuminating readings of Plath's poems, Red Comet brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women the world over.
'A first-class biography . . . Each chapter reads with the ease of a novel . . . I couldn't put it down' — The Times
About the Author
Heather Clark is the author of four works of non-fiction, including Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (published by Jonathan Cape), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was the winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize and the Truman Capote Prize (awarded by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop). It was a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Times and New York Times. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Time, Lit Hub, and TLS. She has recently received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Centre. The Scrapbook is her debut novel.
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