Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
photo: worlddreambank.com Daughter of a "old and prominent New England family," Anne Gray Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts (Kennedy/Gioia 1290) . Most of her childhood was spent in Boston, and she attended Rogers Hall boarding school in Lowell. Known for her elegance, she modeled for a short time for the Hart Agency in Boston, but jettisoned her modeling career to marry Alfred Muller Sexton in 1948. The marriage lasted twenty-five years and produced two daughters: Linda Gray and Joyce Ladd. After the birth of her first daughter, however, Sexton suffered her first mental breakdown--the first of many to come . After Sexton attempted suicide numerous times, it was her therapist, Dr. Martin Orne, whom she began seeing in the mid-fifties, who encouraged her to begin writing poetry as a means of therapy. Though she was reluctant to try to publish her first poems, they were accepted by major magazines such as Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker ( 2...
