Irish Examiner view: ‘The Bell Jar’ tolls

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the death of poet and author Sylvia Plath, whose story is inextricably linked with Ireland

Sylvia Plath, the wife of another poet, Ted Hughes, killed herself after he left her for another woman while they were holidaying in Galway. Picture: Rollie Mckenna

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the death of a female poet and author who is rightly claimed to be one of the greatest influences, not only on literature but on feminism. And it’s a writer whose story is inextricably linked with Ireland.

This week, accomplished Irish actor Denise Gough from Ennis, Co Clare, has been on stage in London performing in An Evening With Sylvia Plath. Plath, the wife of another poet, Ted Hughes, killed herself after he left her for another woman while they were holidaying in Galway. In a devastating echo of that first tragedy, Hughes’s lover, Assia Wevill, took her own life, and that of their four-year-old daughter, six years later after returning to England from a house they had borrowed overlooking Cashel Bay.