Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life explores the way Plath made herself into a writer. Close analysis of Plath's reading and apprenticeship writing both in fiction and poetry sheds considerable light on Plath's work in the late 1960s. Updated to further explore Plath's Literary Life, this edition examines the aftermath of Plath's death in both her writing and her reputation as a writer including the publication of her Collected Poems edited by Ted Hughes which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982. Plath biographies are looked at along with the publication of Hughes's Birthday Letters, including discussion and comparison of Hughes's and Plath's poems. .A chronology maps out key events and publications both in Plath's lifetime and posthumously.