Diane Middlebrook, 68, Biographer of Poets

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The New York Sun

Diane Middlebrook, a leading feminist scholar who wrote acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, died Saturday. She was 68.

Middlebrook, who taught literature at Stanford University for 35 years, is best known for “Anne Sexton: A Biography” which was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award, and “Her Husband: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, a Marriage,” a 2003 best-seller about the tumultuous marriage of the poets. Middlebrook’s biography of the Roman poet Ovid is to be published next year to coincide with the 2,000th anniversary of his birth.

Born in Idaho in 1939, Middlebrook grew up in Spokane, Wash., graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1961 and earned her doctorate at Yale University in 1968.


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