Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and began writing poetry as a child. She entered Smith College in 1950 and, after an abortive suicide attempt in August of 1953, graduated in 1955. She then attended Newnham College in Cambridge for two years on a Fulbright Fellowship where late in her first year she met and shortly thereafter married poet Ted Hughes. Plath took her degree in June 1957, after which she and Hughes sailed to America for a year of teaching and a second year of writing and travel. In late 1959 they returned to England where Plath lived until her death in February 1963.