Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American novelist, poet, and short-story writer. Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and studied at Smith College. She married poet Ted Hughes in 1956, they had two children, a daughter Freida, and a son Nicholas, before separating in 1962. Known primarily for her poetry, she is credited with developing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel, as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel she wrote under the pen name Victoria Lucas, published shortly before her death. The novel paralleled her life and experiences, with the protagonist Esther Greenwood portrayed as a bright and ambitious student at Smith College who begins to undergo a mental breakdown while interning for a fashion magazine. In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. Struggling with clinical depression most of her adult life, Plath committed suicide in 1963.