Editing Sylvia Plath (section)

===College years and depression===
[[File:Sylvia Plath - The Boston Globe (1953).png|thumb|180px|left|Newspaper clipping, August 26, 1953]]
In 1950, Plath attended [[Smith College]], a private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she excelled academically. While at Smith, she lived in Lawrence House, and a plaque can be found outside her old room. She edited ''The Smith Review.'' After her third year of college, Plath was awarded a coveted position as a guest editor at ''[[Mademoiselle (magazine)|Mademoiselle]]'' magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City.<ref name="ODNB" /> The experience was not what she had hoped for, and many of the events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel ''[[The Bell Jar]]''.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|title=Sylvia Platt|url=https://sophia.smith.edu/blog/smithipedia/alumnae/sylvia-plath-1955/|access-date=June 20, 2021|website=Smith College|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624204335/https://sophia.smith.edu/blog/smithipedia/alumnae/sylvia-plath-1955/|url-status=live}}</ref>

She was furious at not being at a meeting that ''Mademoiselle'' editor [[Cyrilly Abels]] had arranged with Welsh poet [[Dylan Thomas]], a writer whose work she loved, according to one of her boyfriends, "more than life itself". She loitered around the [[White Horse Tavern (New York City)|White Horse Tavern]] and the [[Hotel Chelsea|Chelsea Hotel]] for two days, hoping to meet Thomas, but he was already on his way home. A few weeks later, she slashed her legs "to see if she had enough courage to kill herself."{{sfn|Thomas|2008|p=35}}{{efn|"On 15 July, when Sylvia came downstairs, Aurelia noticed that her daughter had a couple of partially healed scars on her legs. After being questioned about them, Sylvia told her mother that she had gashed herself in an effort to see if she had the guts. Then she took hold of Aurelia's hand and said: 'Oh, Mother, the world is so rotten! I want to die! Let's die together!'"<ref name="Wilson1">{{Cite news |title=Sylvia Plath in New York: 'pain, parties and work' |date=2 February 2013 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/02/sylvia-plath-young-new-york-andrew-wilson |last=Wilson |first=Andrew |work=The Guardian |access-date=5 October 2023}}</ref>}} During this time, she was not accepted into a [[Harvard University]] writing seminar with author [[Frank O'Connor]].<ref name="ODNB" /> Following [[electroconvulsive therapy|ECT]] for depression, Plath made her first medically documented suicide attempt on August 24, 1953,<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.sylviaplath.info/documents/Steinberg_2010_Search.pdf |title="They Had to Call and Call": The Search for Sylvia Plath |first=Peter K. |last=Steinberg |journal=Plath Profiles |volume=3 |date=Summer 2010 |issn=2155-8175 |access-date=August 16, 2018 |archive-date=June 22, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170622184101/http://www.sylviaplath.info/documents/Steinberg_2010_Search.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> by crawling under the front porch and taking her mother's sleeping pills.{{sfn|Kibler|1980|pp=259–264}}

She survived this first suicide attempt, later writing that she "blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion". She spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and [[Insulin shock therapy|insulin shock treatment]] under the care of [[Ruth Beuscher]].<ref name="ODNB"/> Her stay at [[McLean Hospital]] and her Smith scholarship were paid for by the author [[Olive Higgins Prouty]], who had also recovered from a mental breakdown.<ref name="Now, Voyager">{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HWjsLMr7ilIC&q=Now%2C+Voyager&pg=PA268| title=Now, Voyager| isbn=978-1558614765| last1=Prouty| first1=Olive Higgins| year=2013| publisher=Feminist Press at CUNY}}</ref> According to Plath's biographer Andrew Wilson, Olive Higgins Prouty "would take Dr Tillotson to task for the badly managed ECT, blaming him for Sylvia's suicide attempt".<ref name="Wilson1" />

[[File:Cambridge Newnham.JPG|thumb|Sidgwick Hall at [[Newnham College, Cambridge]]]]
Plath seemed to make a good recovery and returned to college. In January 1955, she submitted her thesis ''The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of [[Fyodor Dostoevsky|Dostoyevsky]]'s Novels'', and in June graduated from Smith with an [[A.B.]], ''[[summa cum laude]]''.<ref name="Kirk-xix" /> She was a member of the [[Phi Beta Kappa]] academic honor society,<ref name=":0" /> and had an IQ of around 160.{{sfn|Butscher|2003|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=PynC8TFoqOYC&pg=PA27 27]}}<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cpc7CJH1-s8C&pg=RA1-PA388 |title=Encyclopedia of Creativity, Two-Volume Set |page=388 |editor1-last=Runco |editor1-first=Mark A. |editor2-last=Pritzker |editor2-first=Steven R. |publisher=Academic Press |date=1999 |isbn=978-0122270758 |access-date=August 31, 2017 |archive-date=October 28, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191028052632/https://books.google.com/books?id=cpc7CJH1-s8C&pg=RA1-PA388 |url-status=live }}</ref>

She obtained a [[Fulbright Scholarship]] to study at [[Newnham College, Cambridge|Newnham College]], one of the two women-only colleges of the [[University of Cambridge]] in England, where she continued actively writing poetry and publishing her work in the student newspaper ''[[Varsity (Cambridge)|Varsity]]''. At Newnham, she studied with [[Dorothea Krook]], whom she held in high regard.{{sfn|Peel|2007|p=44}} She spent her first-year winter and spring holidays traveling around Europe.<ref name="ODNB"/>