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This is the most comprehensive and objective biography of Plath I have read in a long time and much use has been made of new information revealed in the recently published complete letters, the Harriet Rosenstein archive, and the author’s own research. Previous biographies such as Bitter Fame by Ann Stevenson and Olwyn Hughes were too obviously biased towards Ted Hughes, while others portray Plath as a passive victim of Hughes. This biography is honest about the faults and virtues of both Hughes and Plath. Sylvia Plath is not portrayed as a plaster saint victimised by Hughes but as a very determined and tenacious person who did not suffer fools and expected the same perfectionistic high standards of others as she did of herself. Bad boys thrilled and excited her, and she was something of a masochist in that respect. She enjoyed a sexually sadistic relationship with Richard Sassoon and found a perfect substitute for him in Hughes when Sassoon dumped her in France. The choice of the wild, sexually virile and poetically gifted Hughes as her life partner rather than nice boys such as the safe and conventional Dick Norton or Gordon Lameyer was a big gamble, one that she was more than willing to take, for the sake of her art. She was more than a match for Hughes, and thought she could handle or ‘manage� him. Plath was ‘one very tough lady� and deliberately pursued the life of a mother and writer with all the insecurity and juggling of domestic responsibilities that entailed. She was no feminist and yet was determined to ‘have it all�. She wanted lots of babies and to cook for her man at the same time as she wanted to be a prolific artist. The gamble paid off in terms of her art and she remains one of the most famous women poets of all time, but the consequences for her personal life proved to be disastrous.