Editing Sylvia Plath (section)

===Career and marriage===
[[File:Administration Building, McLean Hospital, Belmont MA.jpg|alt=|thumb|Plath's stay at [[McLean Hospital]] inspired her novel ''[[The Bell Jar]]'']]

Plath met poet [[Ted Hughes]] on February 25, 1956. In a 1961 [[BBC]] interview now held by the [[British Library Sound Archive]],<ref name="Guardian-2010">{{cite web |title=Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes talk about their relationship |date=April 15, 2010 |location=London |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2010/apr/15/sylvia-plath-ted-hughes |access-date=July 9, 2010 |archive-date=November 11, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141111034317/http://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2010/apr/15/sylvia-plath-ted-hughes |url-status=live }} Extract from the 1961 BBC interview with Plath and Hughes. Now held in the [[British Library]] Sound Archive.</ref> Plath describes how she met Hughes:
{{blockquote|
I'd read some of Ted's poems in this magazine and I was very impressed and I wanted to meet him. I went to this little celebration and that's actually where we met... Then we saw a great deal of each other. Ted came back to Cambridge and suddenly we found ourselves getting married a few months later... We kept writing poems to each other. Then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on.<ref name="Guardian-2010"/>
}} Plath described Hughes as "a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer" with "a voice like the thunder of God".<ref name="ODNB"/>

The couple married on June 16, 1956, at [[St George's, Bloomsbury]], with Plath's mother as the sole witness. They spent their honeymoon in Paris and [[Benidorm]], Spain.  Plath returned to Newnham in October to begin her second year.<ref name="ODNB"/> During this time, they both became deeply interested in [[astrology]] and the supernatural, using [[ouija]] boards.<ref>Bloom, Harold (2007) ''Sylvia Plath'', Infobase Publishing, p. 76</ref>

In June 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States; beginning in September, Plath taught at Smith College, her alma mater. She found it difficult to both teach and have enough time and energy to write,<ref name="Kirk-xix">{{harvnb|Kirk|2004|p=xix}}</ref> and in the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston. Plath took a job as a receptionist in the psychiatric unit of [[Massachusetts General Hospital]] and in the evenings sat in on creative writing seminars given by poet [[Robert Lowell]] (also attended by the writers [[Anne Sexton]] and [[George Starbuck]]).<ref name="Kirk-xix"/>

Both Lowell and Sexton encouraged Plath to write from her personal experience. She openly discussed her depression with Lowell and her suicide attempt with Sexton, who led her to write from a more female perspective. Plath began to consider herself as a more serious, focused writer.<ref name="ODNB"/> At this time Plath and Hughes met the poet [[W.S. Merwin]], who admired their work and was to remain a lifelong friend.{{sfn|Helle|2007|p={{page needed|date=July 2017}}}} Plath resumed [[Psychoanalysis|psychoanalytic]] treatment in December, working with Ruth Beuscher.<ref name="ODNB"/>

[[File:Chalcot Square - geograph.org.uk - 1005457.jpg|thumb|right|[[Chalcot Square]], near Primrose Hill in London, Plath and Hughes' home from 1959]]
Plath and Hughes traveled across Canada and the United States, staying at the [[Yaddo]] artist colony in [[Saratoga Springs, New York|Saratoga Springs]], New York, in late 1959. Plath stated that at Yaddo she learned "to be true to my own weirdnesses", but she remained anxious about writing confessionally, from deeply personal and private material.<ref name="ODNB"/>{{sfn|Plath|2000|loc=[https://archive.org/details/unabridgedjourna0000plat/page/520/mode/1up "October 22 [1959&#93;: Thursday", pp. 520–521]}}

The couple moved back to England in December 1959 and lived in London at 3 [[Chalcot Square]], near the Primrose Hill area of [[Regent's Park]], where an [[English Heritage]] plaque records Plath's residence.<ref name="Kirk-xx">{{harvnb|Kirk|2004|p=xx}}</ref><ref name="London Remembers">{{cite web |title=Plaque: Sylvia Plath |work=London Remembers |url=http://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/sylvia-plath |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160322105555/http://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/sylvia-plath |archive-date=March 22, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> Their daughter [[Frieda Hughes|Frieda]] was born on April 1, 1960, and in October, Plath published ''[[The Colossus and Other Poems|The Colossus]]'', her first collection of poetry.<ref name="Kirk-xx"/>

In February 1961, Plath's second pregnancy ended in miscarriage; several of her poems, including "Parliament Hill Fields", address this event.{{sfn|Kirk|2004|p=85}} In a letter to her therapist, Plath wrote that Hughes [[Domestic violence|beat her]] two days before the miscarriage.<ref name="Kean-2017">{{cite news |last=Kean |first=Danuta |date=April 11, 2017 |title=Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes |location=London |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/11/unseen-sylvia-plath-letters-claim-domestic-abuse-by-ted-hughes |access-date=April 14, 2017 |archive-date=April 15, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200415134707/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/11/unseen-sylvia-plath-letters-claim-domestic-abuse-by-ted-hughes |url-status=live }}</ref> In August she finished her semi-autobiographical novel ''[[The Bell Jar]]''; immediately afterwards, the family moved to [[Court Green]] in the small market town of [[North Tawton]]. [[Nicholas Hughes|Nicholas]] was born in January 1962.<ref name="Kirk-xx"/> In mid-1962, Plath and Hughes began to keep bees, which would be the subject of many Plath poems.<ref name="ODNB"/>

In August 1961, the couple rented their flat at Chalcot Square to [[Assia Wevill|Assia (née Gutmann) Wevill]] and [[David Wevill]].<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/apr/10/tedhughes.sylviaplath "Haunted by the ghosts of love"], ''Guardian'', April 10, 1999.</ref> Hughes was immediately struck with Assia, as she was with him. In June 1962, Plath had a car accident, which she later described as a suicide attempt. In July 1962 Plath discovered Hughes was having an affair with Wevill; in September, Plath and Hughes separated.<ref name="Kirk-xx"/>

Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and composed most of the poems on which her reputation now rests, writing at least 26 of the poems of her posthumous collection ''[[Ariel (poetry collection)|Ariel]]'' during the final months of her life.<ref name="Kirk-xx"/><ref>{{cite web |title=Sylvia Plath |work=The Poetry Archive |url=http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/sylvia-plath |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170703202957/http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/sylvia-plath |archive-date=July 3, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath—a marriage examined">[https://web.archive.org/web/20051218022114/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1669_286/ai_n13247735 ''Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath&nbsp;– a marriage examined''. From ''The Contemporary Review''. Essay by Richard Whittington-Egan 2005] accessed July 9, 2010</ref> In December 1962, she returned alone to London with their children and rented, on a five-year lease, a flat at 23 [[Fitzroy Road]]—only a few streets from the Chalcot Square flat. [[William Butler Yeats]] once lived in the house, which bears an English Heritage [[blue plaque]] for the Irish poet. Plath was pleased by this fact and considered it a good omen.

The [[Winter of 1962–1963 in the United Kingdom|winter of 1962–1963]] was one of the coldest on record in the UK; the pipes froze, the children—now two years old and nine months—were often sick, and the house had no telephone.<ref name="Gifford-2008">{{harvnb|Gifford|2008|p=15}}</ref> Her depression returned but she completed the rest of her poetry collection, which would be published after her death (1965 in the UK, 1966 in the US). Her only novel, ''The Bell Jar'', was published in January 1963 under the pen name Victoria Lucas and was met with critical indifference.<ref name="Kirk-xxi">{{harvnb|Kirk|2004|p=xxi}}</ref>