children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1942. Plath commented in her essay "Ocean 1212-W", one of her final works, that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle--beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth".

Plath published her first poem at the age of eight in the Boston Heralds children's section. Over the next few years, Plath published multiple poems in regional magazines and newspapers. At age 11, Plath