Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer known for her confessional style and exploration of complex themes such as mental illness, gender roles, and existential despair. She was born in 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts, and showed an early talent for writing. Plath attended Smith College, where she excelled academically and began to publish her poetry. In 1956, she received a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge University in England, where she met and married the British poet Ted Hughes.