The Making of Sylvia Plath

Carl Rollyson is professor emeritus of journalism at Baruch College, CUNY. He is author of many biographies, including Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volumes 1 & 2; William Faulkner Day by Day; The Last Days of Sylvia Plath; A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan; Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews; and Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Revised and Updated. He is also coauthor (with Lisa Paddock) of Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated. His reviews of biographies have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New Criterion. He also writes a weekly column on biography for the New York Sun.

The Making of Sylvia Plath builds upon and furthers the narrative that Carl Rollyson and other scholars have been working on for some time now--revising and repositioning the legacy of Sylvia Plath, which was so badly presented to the world in the decades after her death. Plath deserves the recognition of her genius, and it is important to understand and unravel ways in which women are often subjected to very different histories than men. This book offers new perspectives with a focus on underexplored areas of Plath's life.--Gail Crowther, author of Dorothy Parker in Hollywood and Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton In The Making of Sylvia Plath, Carl Rollyson takes a deep dive into the intellectual and popular culture of Sylvia Plath's time to see how she was shaped by cinema, books, and the fashionable ideas of her day. Once more, Rollyson helps to rehabilitate our bad ideas about Plath as a grim, deadly serious writer into a woman who loved movies, fashion, and the world around her, and who wanted to help shape that world, in turn. Rollyson's breezy treatment of movies like Cynthia and his joyful approach to Plath's interior development turn heady subject material into a page-turner, never sacrificing intellectual rigor. Every time we think we've learned everything we can about Sylvia Plath, Carl Rollyson changes our minds.--Emily Van Duyne, author of Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation