Diane Middlebrook - Writings

Writings

After the book on Stevens and Whitman, Middlebrook wrote or edited three books on poetry: Worlds Into Words: Understanding Modern Poems (1980), Coming to Light: American Women Poets in the 20th Century (1985), and Selected Poems of Anne Sexton (1988). She also wrote her own book of poetry, Gin Considered as a Demon (1983). The edition of Anne Sexton's poetry helped lead to what can be described as Middlebrook's big break: her book Anne Sexton, A Biography published in 1991.

The Sexton biography became a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award. An intriguing blend of traditional biography, psychiatric study, and literary criticism, the book was written in an infectious, non-pedantic style that attracted a wide range of readers.

Middlebrook then took an interesting detour from her study of poetry and poets in her next book, Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton (1998). The story of a jazz musician who was born a woman but lived for over fifty years as a man, the book also sold well and showed that Middlebrook could range outside the traditional purview of the English Department.

The Sexton biography might have led inevitably to Middlebrook's book about Anne Sexton's friend and fellow-suicide, Sylvia Plath. Published as Her Husband: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, a Marriage in 2003, the biography steered a sensible and convincing course between partisan views of the two poets. Publishers Weekly called it the "gold standard" of the many books published about the couple, and it became a Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Besides her books, Middlebrook published many articles on Sexton, Plath, Hughes, and other writers, such as Robert Lowell and Philip Larkin. She also reviewed a wide variety of books on subjects ranging from Helen Keller to the development of modern clothing. She said that her planned book on Ovid was an attempt to get inside a subject who "exists only in his texts."