Sylvia Plath and Winthrop-By-The-Sea

By Jeffery Round
During her early years, Sylvia Plath lived in a number of places in Massachusetts. Of her youthful residences, none is more bleakly picturesque than Winthrop-By-The-Sea and the adjacent Point Shirley. It is a fitting childhood home for a poet whose words are more intensely chilling than almost any other.
Although Plath eventually moved to England with her husband, poet Ted Hughes, and died there by her own hand at the age of 30, her writing was formed long before. Certainly, her time in Winthrop contributed to it. And while the town may not have been responsible for her recurr...