Sylvia Plath's Letters 1940 - 1963 by Sylvia Plath. In this collection, over 55 years later, new details of Plath's life, with her profound writings on melancholy and overwhelming emotion, are uncovered. Her literary talent was fueled by her lifelong struggle with depression, the loss of her father as a child, and her conflicting feelings toward her mother, who also suffered from the same illness. The deeper aspect of these emotions relates to her relationship with her husband, poet Ted Hughes, her reactions and feelings upon discovering his affair with Assia Wevill, his abandonment of her and their children, and her transition from denial to anger, then to sad resignation, and finally to complete despair leading to her suicide. Throughout these stages, she continued to write letters, a habit she maintained since she was ten, mostly daily reports to her mother Aurelia Plath, ending with her last letter at thirty to her psychiatrist days before her suicide.