Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) is regarded today as the greatest U.S. poet after Emily Dickinson. Yet her fame arrived posthumously: in 1963, this gifted representative of the literature of the ’60s, wife of the famous English poet Tom Hughes and mother of two children, took her own life by her own will. Her novel “The Bell Jar” is considered a classic of American literature. With the candor of someone speaking from within, it tells the story of the heroine’s severe depression and mental breakdown—how she agonizingly invents ways to end her life, and then slowly returns to reality.