About this item
"[Plaths] story is stirring, in sneaky, unexpected ways. . . . Look carefully and theres a new angle here - on how, and why, we read Plath today." - Parul Sehgal, New York TimesNever before published, this newly discovered story by literary legend Sylvia Plath stands on its own and is remarkable for its symbolic, allegorical approach to a young womans rebellion against convention and forceful taking control of her own life. Written while Sylvia Plath was a student at Smith College in 1952, Mary Ventura and The Ninth Kingdom tells the story of a young womans fateful train journey.Lips the color of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like "guilt, and guilt, and guilt": these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom."But what is the ninth kingdom?" she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. "It is the kingdom of the frozen will," comes the reply. "There is no going back."Sylvia Plaths strange, dark tale of female agency and independence, written not long after she herself left home, grapples with mortality in motion.
About the Author
Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and The Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Plath is credited with being a pioneer of the 20th-century style of writing called confessional poetry. Her poem "Daddy" is one of the best-known examples of this genre.
In 1963, Plath's semi-autobiographic novel The Bell Jar was published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas"; it was reissued in 1966 under her own name. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.
