Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. She lost her father at a young age and her mother supported the family as a teacher. Plath was always a dedicated writer from a young age. She attended Smith College on a scholarship and had early success getting work published. In 1955, she graduated from Smith and went to study at Cambridge University in England where she met her future husband, the poet Ted Hughes. They married in 1956 and had two children together, but Hughes left Plath for another woman in 1962, plunging her into a deep depression. Plath took her own life in 1963 at the age of 30.