Sylvia Plath reading her late poems

In the final year of her life, Sylvia Plath was living in England as her marriage to the poet Ted Hughes fell apart. This was a very productive year of writing for Plath, as she completed the manuscript of The Bell Jar and prepared it for (pseudonymous) publication and wrote a number of her most well-known, beguiling, and deeply personal works of poetry, usually in the early morning hours before her infant and toddler were awake. These late poems were posthumously collected in the book Ariel (1965), but Plath was reading versions of them publicly in 1962, including a series of recorded readings for the BBC.

Here is a recording of Plath reading one of her best-known poems, "Lady Lazarus," on the BBC in 1962:

And here is a recording of Plath reading another of her best-known poems, "Daddy," also on the BBC in 1962: