Sylvia Plath in the context of "The Colossus and Other Poems"

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer. Her work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognised during her life, for which Franklin has been variously referred to as the "wronged heroine", the "dark lady of DNA", the "forgotten heroine", a "feminist icon", and the "Sylvia Plath of molecular biology".

Franklin graduated in 1941 with a degree in natural sciences from Newnham College, Cambridge, and then enrolled for a PhD in physical chemistry under Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, the 1920 Chair of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Disappointed by Norrish's lack of enthusiasm, she took up a research position under the British Coal Utilisation Research Association (BCURA) in 1942. The research on coal helped Franklin earn a PhD from Cambridge in 1945. Moving to Paris in 1947 as a chercheur (postdoctoral researcher) under Jacques Mering at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'État, she became an accomplished X-ray crystallographer. After joining King's College London in 1951 as a research associate, Franklin discovered some key properties of DNA, which eventually facilitated the correct description of the double helix structure of DNA. Owing to disagreement with her director, John Randall, and her colleague Maurice Wilkins, Franklin was compelled to move to Birkbeck College in 1953.

Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Founded in 1929, in 2006 the company was named the KPMG Publisher of the Year.

Edward James Hughes OM OBE FRSL (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Hughes married fellow poet, American Sylvia Plath, in 1956. They lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962. Plath ended her life in 1963.

Ariel is Sylvia Plath's second collection of poetry. It was first released in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. The poems of Ariel, with their free-flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from Plath's earlier Colossus poems.

Ted Hughes, Plath's widower and the editor of Ariel, made substantial changes to her intended plan for the collection by changing her ordering of the poems, dropping some pieces, and adding others. The first American edition was published in 1966 and included an introduction by the poet Robert Lowell. This was appropriate, since, in a BBC interview, Plath had cited Lowell's book Life Studies as having had a profound influence over the poetry she was writing in the last phase of her writing career. In the same interview, Plath also cited the poet Anne Sexton as an important influence on her writing during that time, since Sexton was also exploring some of the same dark, taboo, personal subject matter that Plath was exploring in her writing.

The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is supposedly semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef because the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression. Plath died by suicide a month after its first UK publication.

The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1966. It was not published in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of both Plath's husband Ted Hughes and her mother. In the United States, the book became an instant best-seller, and has since been translated into more than forty languages.