Sylvia Plath is widely recognised as one of the leading figures in twentieth-century literature and culture. Although in her lifetime she published only one collection of poems, The Colossus, and one novel, The Bell Jar, the posthumous publication of the magnificent poems of Ariel, of her edgy and finely crafted stories and sketches, and of her Letters Home and Journals have consolidated her position as one of her age's most important and influential writers. As Marjorie Perloff puts it: ‘This is a body of work quite unprecedented in twentieth-century American poetry.’

From its first appearance, Plath's writing has remained constantly in print on both sides of the Atlantic and in numerous other countries in translated editions. The Plath catalogue continues to expand, with recent unabridged editions of the Journals and a new ‘restored’ edition of Ariel offering further material for readers to consider. From the outset, her work has been accompanied by a plethora of scholarly responses and interpretations and each new Plath edition stimulates yet more. The first aim of The Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath is to offer new readers an accessible, authoritative and comprehensive guide to Plath's writing. The second is to provide an incisive and insightful overview of key tendencies and developments in Plath criticism. This is an immense and varied field. I have tried in the discussions that follow to offer fair summaries of distinct and valuable perspectives and to present a representative range of critical voices.