Anne Sexton: A Biography

Anne Sexton began writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to keep from killing herself. She held on to language for dear life and somehow -- in spite of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide -- managed to create a body of work that won a Pulitzer Prize and that still sings to thousands of readers. This exemplary biography, which was nominated for the National Book Award, provoked controversy for its revelations of infidelity and incest and its use of tapes from Sexton's psychiatric sessions. It reconciles the many Anne Sextons: the 1950s housewife; the abused child who became an abusive mother; the seductress; the suicide who carried "kill-me pills" in her handbag the way other women carry lipstick; and the poet who transmuted confession into lasting art.

• The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton
• Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters
• Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton
• Selected Poems: Anne Sexton
• The Collected Poems
• Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath
• Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath--A Marriage
• The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
• To Bedlam and Part Way Back
• An Accident of Hope: The Therapy Tapes of Anne Sexton