Anne Gray Harvey was born into an upper-middle class family in Newton, Massachusetts
on November 9, 1928. She attended Rogers Preparatory School and a Boston finishing
school known as The Garland School. In 1948, she eloped with Alfred Muller Sexton just
a few months before her twentieth birthday. Anne Sexton received a scholarship from the
Hart Agency in Boston, and worked there as a model for a brief time. Sexton later moved
from Boston to Baltimore, back to Boston and then to San Francisco. In 1953, Sexton
moved back to Massachusetts where her first daughter Linda Gray Sexton was born.
The following year, Sexton was hospitalized at Westwood Lodge for emotional
disturbances. Several months later, Anna “Nana” Ladd Dingley, Sexton’s beloved
great-aunt, died. In 1955, Sexton’s second daughter Joyce Ladd Sexton was born. Soon
afterward Sexton was admitted to a mental hospital. Eight months later, Sexton attempted
suicide. The following month she began writing poetry at the insistence of her psychiatrist,
Dr. Martin Orne.
Sexton enrolled in John Holme’s poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult
Education. Based on the quality of her first work, Sexton received a scholarship in 1958
to Antioch Writers’ Conference and worked with W. D. Snodgrass. That same year, she
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Students on the NC State campus are not allowed to have access to the gym and music center facilities at peak hours of boredom during the weekend. During the week while the student's are hurrying to and from classes, they are busy, hard working, and tired of the stress that comes along with balancing academics in college. When the weekend comes around, everyone should be allowed to have a way to ...
was accepted into Robert Lowell’s graduate writing seminar at Boston University. It was
while attending Boston University that she forged friendships with Sylvia Plath, Maxine
Kumin and George Starbuck.
In 1959, Sexton’s mother, Mary Gray Staples Harvey, died of cancer, and her
father, Ralph Churchill Harvey, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. In August of that year,
Sexton received the Robert Frost Fellowship to attend the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference.
She later was hospitalized that year for pneumonia, an appendectomy and an ovarectomy.
By the end of 1959 she was back on her feet and delivered the Morris Gray Poetry
Lecture at Harvard.
In 1960, Sexton published TO BEDLAM AND PART WAY BACK. It was also in this
year that she studied with Philip Rahv and Irving Howe at Brandeis University and forged
a friendship with James Write. In 1961, Sexton and Maxine Kumin were appointed to be
the first scholars in poetry at the Radcliff Institute for Independent Study. Sexton also
taught poetry and writing at Harvard and Radcliffe that year.
In 1962, Sexton was hospitalized for depression at Westwood Lodge. In November, she
was awarded the Levinson Prize from POETRY. In 1963, ALL MY PRETTY ONES was
nominated for the National Book Award. She was awarded the Ford Foundation grant for
residence with the Charles Playhouse in Boston. By the end of the year, she toured Europe
on the first Traveling Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1964, SELECTED POEMS as published in England. She toured Europe with her
husband, moved into a new home and started seeing a new psychiatrist. In 1965, she was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was given the first literary
magazine travel award from the International Congress of Cultural Freedom.
In 1966, Sexton attempted suicide after beginning a novel that she never finished. A month
following this suicide attempt, she and her husband went on an African safari. On her
thirty-eighth birthday, she was hospitalized for a broken hip. In 1967, Sexton won the
Pulitzer Prize for LIVE OR DIE, and also received the Shelley Award from the Poetry
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Abstract This essay will examine the proposition of the problems faced by first year students at any university. Firstly, it will consider different studying strategies compared to high school. Secondly, it will discuss the pressure on students especially on first year students to pass the coursework. Thirdly, homesick which diverts students attention from studies. Fourthly, the environment and ...
Society of America. In July of 1967, she read at the International Poetry Festival in
London and toured England. Later that year, she taught at Wayland High School.
Sexton received an honorary Phi Beta Kappa award from Harvard in 1968. She taught
poetry in McLean’s Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. In 1969, she served as editorial
consultant to the NEW YORK POETRY QUARTERLY, and was awarded the
Guggenheim Fellowship in April of that year. She also began seeing a new Psychiatrist in
1969, and in June of that year received an honorary Phi Beta Kappa award from Radcliffe
University. She began teaching at Boston University, worked at the American Place
Theatre in New York on 45 MERCY STREET and conducted workshops in her home for
Oberlin College Independent Study students.
In 1970, before another suicide attempt, Sexton served on the board of directors of
AUDIENCE magazine and was made honorary Doctor of Letters at Tufts University.
Sexton made full professor at Boston University in 1972 and was awarded the Crashaw
Chair in Literature at Colgate University. Later that year, Fairfeild University awarded
Sexton an honorary Doctor of Letters.
In 1973, she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Regis College, served on the
Pulitzer Prize jury, and lectured at Breadloaf Writer’s Conference. An operatic adaptation
of her work, TRANSFORMATIONS, was performed in Minneapolis. Sexton divorced her
husband and was hospitalized at both McLean’s Hospital in August and Human Resources
Institute later in the year.
Bibliography
Encyclopedias Encarta and Brittannica and Salvat and Hispanica.
