HEATHER CLARK earned her bachelor's degree in English literature from Harvard University and her doctorate in English from Oxford University. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Fellowship, a Leon Levy Biography Fellowship at the City University of New York, and a Visiting US Fellowship at the Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library. A former visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, she is the author of The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972. Her work has appeared in publications including Harvard Review, Times Literary Supplement, Time, AirMail, and LitHub, and she recently served as the scholarly consultant for the BBC documentary Sylvia Plath: Life Inside the Bell Jar. She divides her time between Chappaqua, New York, and Yorkshire, England, where she is a professor of contemporary poetry at the University of Huddersfield.
A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year • Finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and
the LA Times Book Prize • A New York Times Notable Book • Named a
Book of the Year: O, the Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly,
Boston Globe, Literary Hub, The Times (London), The Guardian, The
Daily Telegraph, and The Times of India • Winner of the
Biographers' Club Slightly Foxed Prize for Best First Biography
“Mesmerizing . . . Comprehensive . . . Stuffed with heretofore
untold anecdotes that illuminate or extend our understanding of
Plath’s life . . . Clark is a felicitous writer and a discerning
critic of Plath’s poetry . . . There is no denying the book’s
intellectual power and, just as important, its sheer
readability.”
—The New York Times
“A majestic tome with the narrative propulsion of a thriller. We
now have the complete story.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
“An exhaustively researched, frequently brilliant masterwork. . .
. It is an impressive achievement representing a prizeworthy
contribution to literary scholarship and biographical
journalism.”
—The Washington Post
“One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read."
—Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed
“Clark masterfully analyzes the poetry with intelligent
incorporation of the biography. . . . Red Comet shows that the
achievement of Sylvia Plath was miraculous—but it wasn’t spasmodic,
or rare. It was hard-won, every single day.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Massive, insightful . . . Red Comet is a critical examination of
what it means to be a female artist, to suffer from depression, and
to be alone, as it is revelatory about this one particular life and
the art that came from it. The red comet (an image from her poem
‘Stings’) is an apt metaphor for Plath.”
—Boston Globe
“Revelatory. . . . Plath’s struggles with depression and her
marriage to Ted Hughes emerge in complex detail, but Clark does not
let Plath’s suicide define her artistic achievement, arguing with
refreshing rigor for her significance to modern letters. The result
is a new understanding and appreciation of an innovative,
uncompromising poetic voice.”
—The New Yorker
“A definitive biography. . . . What ultimately bursts off the page
is Plath’s short, vibrant life, which is too often most remembered
for the way it ended: ‘That’s the irony, isn’t it?’ says Clark.
‘She’s so incredibly alive.’”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Red Comet is absolutely necessary. . . . In Clark’s attentive
hands, Plath’s life is laid out in its full complexity.”
—Lit Hub
“Aiming to shake the public perception of Sylvia Plath as ‘the
Marilyn Monroe of the literati,’ Clark delivers a meticulous,
unflinching and fresh view of the brilliant, troubled
poet.”
—People
“Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath . . .
Takes its time in desensationalizing the life and the art; this
lets Clark place both firmly in the literary and politically
engaged contexts that formed them and simultaneously demonstrate
how Plath’s work, in return, gifted the writing life unimaginable
new sinew.”
—The Guardian (“The Best Books of 2020”)
“Red Comet is a mighty achievement. Clark is compassionate,
clear-eyed, sceptical. Each chapter reads with the ease of a novel.
. . . Plath’s resilience, genius and insight blaze through the
book.”
—The Times (UK)
“Clark entices us with the impossible: an ‘unbiased,’ authorised
biography of Sylvia Plath. . . . Red Comet is the kind of serious
literary biography Plath has long deserved but, until now, not
received.”
—New Statesman (UK)
“Unlike other biographies of Plath (1932-63), Clark’s traces her
subject’s literary and intellectual development rather than
concentrating on her undoing through suicide. . . . A masterful
biography, that will especially interest literary scholars.”
—Library Journal
“[A] page-turning, meticulously researched biography of Sylvia
Plath. . . . Clark’s in-depth scholarship and fine writing result
in a superb work that will deliver fresh revelations to Plath’s
many devoted fans.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A sober and detailed critical biography of one of the 20th
century’s greatest and most misunderstood poets. . . . Redeems
Plath from the condescension of easy interpretation.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Once I started reading this book, I couldn’t stop; I read it upon
waking and late at night, at the dinner table and during the
workday. I thought I knew Plath, but this wonderful book shows me I
did not. Like the lyric speakers of her late poetry, she emerges
from these pages transformed. Red Comet presents Sylvia Plath as
she ought to be: as an innovative, ambitious, driven artist, at a
time when women weren’t supposed to be any of these things. In the
end, I was awestruck by Plath’s courage and strength in the face of
so many obstacles; I was awed, too, by the work Clark has done to
bring this writer to life.”
—Maggie Doherty, author of The Equivalents
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