Ariel is Sylvia Plath s second poetry collection published two years after her death. It comprises the poems she wrote just before her death and includes many of her masterpieces such as "Daddy," "Lady Lazarus" and "Paralytic." Much of her fame as a great poet rests on this collection. This edition follows the first US edition which contained two more poems - "Mary s Song" and "The Swarm"- than the first UK edition.

About the Author

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. She studied at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Later, she went on a Fulbright scholarship to study at Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, England. There she met Ted Hughes at a party in February 1956 and they married in June of the same year. They lived in the United States and later in England and had two children. Plath spent most of her adult life in depression. She made many unsuccessful attempts at her life and finally committed suicide on February 11, 1963.

Plath was an exceptionally gifted poet and is frequently dubbed as one of the best woman poets of the western world. She won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems in 1982. She wrote fiction too and her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar is one of the most read novels today.