Diane (Wood) Middlebrook (born 1939) is an American biographer, poet and teacher. She is best known for critically acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath (along with Plath's husband Ted Hughes) and jazz musician Billy Tipton. Her current project is a biography of the Roman poet Ovid. She taught for many years at Stanford University. Sir Thomas Malory wrote the most famous fictional biography of the Middle Ages with Le Morte dArthur about the life of King Arthur. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is traditionally a written art form (although there is also an ancient and modern poetry which relies mainly upon oral or pictorial representations) in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928–October 4, 1974), born Anne Gray Harvey, was an American poet and writer. ... A self-portrait circa 1951. ... Edward James Hughes, OM, referred to normally as Ted Hughes, (August 17, 1930 – October 28, 1998) was an English poet and childrens writer. ... Billy Lee Tipton (December 29, 1914 - January 21, 1989) was a United States jazz pianist and saxophonist. ... Bush is the worst president~ signed the black shark ... The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University (or simply Stanford), is a privately-funded American university in Stanford, California. ...

Middlebrook holds no illusions about the difficulties facing a biographer. In an interview on her professional life she says: "With a biography there is no straight line; all is muddled. You don't know what you know, you don't know what you don't know; if you find anything you make a note about it because some day it may find its partner. You have to have very good ways of keeping track of what you have found and where you have put it."

Education and teaching career

Educated at the University of Washington and Yale University, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1968, Middlebrook wrote her doctoral dissertation on Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens. She claims that the dissertation wasn't very good, and that "you can’t find my book in the library, because it isn't in the Whitman place, it isn't in the Stevens place, it's in some American literature place." The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a major public research university in the Seattle metropolitan area. ... Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. ... Walt Whitman Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist born on Long Island, New York. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Middlebrook began her teaching career at Stanford as an Assistant Professor in 1966 and gradually worked her way up to University Professor and Associate Dean positions. She won a number of fellowships, grants and awards along the way. She resigned from Stanford in 2004 to concentrate fully on her writing.

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 1992.

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. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... The National Book Awards is the most important literary prize in the United States, presented annually for the best books by living U.S. citizens published in the U.S. The awards have been presented since 1950 in at least one category, and is presently awarded in each of four... Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that studies, diagnoses and treats mental illness and behavioral disorders. ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ...

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. Publisher's Weekly called it the "gold standard" of the many books published about the couple, and it became a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Publishers Weekly is a weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. ... The Los Angeles Times (also known as the LA Times) is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California and distributed throughout the western United States. ...

Besides her books Middlebrook has published many articles on Sexton, Plath, Hughes and other writers such as Robert Lowell and Philip Larkin. She has also reviewed a wide variety of books on subjects ranging from Helen Keller to the development of modern clothing. She says that her planned book on Ovid is an attempt to get inside a subject who "exists only in his texts." Robert Lowell Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917–September 12, 1977), born Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Jr. ... Philip Arthur Larkin (August 9, 1922 – December 2, 1985) was an English poet, novelist and jazz critic. ... Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was a deafblind American author, activist and lecturer. ... (See also List of types of clothing and Clothing terminology) Humans nearly universally wear articles of clothing (also known as dress, garments, attire, or apparel) on the body. ...

Personal life

Originally from Pocatello, Idaho, Middlebrook has spent the last 28 years with her third husband, Carl Djerassi, a Viennese-American scientist who helped invent the contraceptive pill. Middlebrook's experience with her two divorces was something that, in her own words, "rips your soul out of your body." She and her husband spend the winters in San Francisco and the summers in London. Historic downtown Pocatello Pocatello is a city located in Bannock County, with a small portion in neighboring Power County, in southeastern Idaho. ... Patent of the first oral contraceptive, elected to the USA Inventors Hall of Fame . Carl Djerassi (born October 29, 1923 in Vienna, Austria), is a chemist and playwright best known for his contribution to the development of the oral contraceptive pill (OCP). ... Vienna (German: Wien [viːn]; Slovenian: Dunaj, Hungarian: Bécs, Czech: Vídeň, Slovak: Viedeň, Romany Vidnya; Croatian and Serbian: Beč) is the capital of Austria, and also one of the nine States of Austria. ... Oral contraceptives are contraceptives which are taken orally and inhibit the bodys fertility by chemical means. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ...

External links

• DianeMiddlebrook.com, the author's personal web site
• Interview with Diane Middlebrook on her career as a writer
• Interview with Diane Middlebrook on her personal life and her views of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes