University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is the university Sylvia Plath attended on a Fulbright year after graduating from Smith College. There she met the British poet Ted Hughes, making the institution a setting for both her academic development and the start of their relationship.

Plath’s Fulbright Year

After graduating from Smith College summa cum laude in June 1955, Plath went to Newnham College at the University of Cambridge for an English Fulbright year. Her fellowship was renewed. Following a vacation in Spain, she and Hughes lived in Cambridge for another year.

A Meeting and a Marriage

Plath met Hughes at Cambridge. They married in London on June 16, 1956, a date also identified as Bloomsday. Their subsequent year living in Cambridge situated the beginning of their shared life in Britain within the period of Plath’s renewed fellowship.

Place in Plath’s Trajectory

Cambridge connects Plath’s academic distinction to a major personal change: after her Smith College graduation and Fulbright appointment, she met the poet she would marry. In spring 1957, she and Hughes moved to the United States, where Plath’s colleagues later regarded her as one of the finest instructors to have appeared in Smith College’s English department. The university thus marks a specific interval between her American education and teaching career, and her marriage and life with Hughes in Britain.