{"product_id":"the-last-days-of-sylvia-plath-9781496821225","title":"The Last Days of Sylvia Plath","description":"In her last days, Sylvia Plath struggled to break out from the control of the towering figure of her husband Ted Hughes. In the antique mythology of his retinue, she had become the gorgon threatening to bring down the House of Hughes. Drawing on recently available court records, archives, and interviews, and reevaluating the memoirs of the formidable Hughes contingent who treated Plath as a female hysteric, Carl Rollyson rehabilitates the image of a woman too often viewed solely within the confines of what Hughes and his collaborators wanted to be written. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Rollyson is the first biographer to gain access to the papers of Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse at Smith College, a key figure in the poet's final days. Barnhouse was a therapist who may have been the only person to whom Plath believed she could reveal her whole self. Barnhouse went beyond the protocols of her profession, serving more as Plath's ally, seeking a way out of the imprisoning charisma of Ted Hughes and friends he counted on to support a regime of antipathy against her. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Last Days of Sylvia Plath\u003c\/i\u003e focuses on the train of events that plagued Plath's last seven months when she tried to recover her own life in the midst of Hughes's alternating threats and reassurances. In a siege-like atmosphere a tormented Plath continued to write, reach out to friends, and care for her two children. Why Barnhouse seemed, in Hughes's malign view, his wife's undoing, and how biographers, Hughes, and his cohort parsed the events that led to the poet's death, form the charged and contentious story this book has to tell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCarl Rollyson \u003c\/b\u003eis professor emeritus of journalism at Baruch College, CUNY. He is author of many biographies, including \u003ci\u003eSylvia Plath Day by Day, Volumes 1 \u0026amp; 2\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eWilliam Faulkner Day by Day\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eA Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eHollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eMarilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Revised and Updated\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also coauthor (with Lisa Paddock) of \u003ci\u003eSusan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated. \u003c\/i\u003eHis reviews of biographies have appeared in the \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eNew Criterion\u003c\/i\u003e. He also writes a weekly column on biography for the\u003ci\u003e New York Sun.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University Press of Mississippi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50557333766418,"sku":"9781496821225","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_f95f4447-bde5-4617-aa52-ab63dabb4f8d.jpg?v=1731779262","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-last-days-of-sylvia-plath-9781496821225","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}