Sylvia Plath: Sylvia Plath. Writer: The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to Otto and Aurelia Schoeber Plath, both professors. When Sylvia was eight, Otto died of complications from diabetes. Her mother struggled to give Sylvia and her younger brother every advantage of a superior education. Self-consciousness and anxiety about status and money contributed to profound insecurity Plath concealed all her life beneath a facade of energy and...
