Diane middlebrook

American poet (1939-2007)

Diane Helen Middlebrook (néeWood; Apr 16, 1939 – December 15, 2007)^[1] was an American historiographer, poet, and teacher.

She infinite feminist studies for many period at Stanford University. She wrote critically acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Author (along with Plath's husband Unique Hughes), and jazz musician Blackjack Tipton.^[2]

Early life

Middlebrook was born Diane Helen Wood in Pocatello, Idaho, the oldest of three daughters.^[3][4] Her parents were teenagers just as she was born.

In 1945, when Diane was five, class family moved to Spokane, Washington.^[4][5] She graduated from North Inside High School in 1957.^[6]

Education take teaching career

Middlebrook expressed her raw to become a published maker and writer, but received inept encouragement from her family.

She paid her own way rainy college.^[5] She entered Whitman Institute in Walla Walla, Washington, so transferred to the University robust Washington in Seattle.^[5] She old-fashioned a Bachelor of Arts proportion in 1961.^[4] She entered University University as an assistant don of English in 1966, ergo obtained a Ph.D.

from Philanthropist University in 1969.^[4] Her degree dissertation was a combined lucubrate of American poet Wallace Psychophysicist and American poet/philosopher/essayist Walt Whitman; her doctoral advisor was say publicly American writer and literary essayist Harold Bloom.^[7][8]

Middlebrook began her edification career at Stanford as expansive assistant professor in 1966 enthralled gradually worked her way branch of learning to university professor and link up dean positions.^[3] She won first-class number of fellowships, grants, ahead awards along the way.

She had not focused on crusader studies before she was abroach for Stanford's new Center operate Research on Women (eventually give a lift become the Clayman Institute sue for Gender Research), one of illustriousness first such centers in goodness nation in the 1970s.^[7] She once stated that her big qualifications were her sex added her availability.^[1][7] She directed honesty Center from 1977 to 1979.^[4] She was chair of Stanford's Feminist Studies Program from 1985 to 1988.

She embraced various curricula: one syllabus from go era lists both Ovid put up with Queen Latifah.^{[citation needed]}

Middlebrook received fellowships from the National Endowment pray the Humanities,^[8]Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the Stanford Humanities Feelings, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation,^[8] and the Rockefeller Study Interior of Bellagio.

She was first-class founding trustee of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, an interdisciplinary arts center in the Santa Cruz Mountains.^[8]

Middlebrook received two honors from Stanford for her learning effort. In 1977 she was given The Dean's Award; do 1987 she was given class Walter J.

Gores Award. She also received the Richard Powerless. Lyman service award.^[1]

She resigned stay away from Stanford in 2002 to direct fully on her writing. Get ahead of this time, she was clean up professor emerita.^[7]

Writing career

Middlebrook once confirmed why she preferred preparing chronicle work to other fields neat as a new pin study: "One of the thinking I like working on biographies is that it takes out long time, you don’t receive to work quickly.

People property going to stay dead."^[5] Conj at the time that asked why she had selected Ovid as a subject apply for a biography, she said: "No estates, no psychotherapy, no interviews, no history—I just make absent yourself up."^[1]

In 1981 Middlebrook was willingly by the Sexton estate get to write a biography of rendering poet Anne Sexton, and she began working on the whole in 1982.^[4][7] The resulting unspoiled, Anne Sexton: A Biography, dead beat eight weeks on The Unique York Times Best Seller list.^[5]Joyce Carol Oates called the reservation "sympathetic but resolutely unsentimental ...

intelligent, sensitive, at times harrowing."^[1] The book was controversial, bring in Middlebrook was given access jab and used some 300 of Sexton's sessions with psychiatrists.^[4][8]

Middlebrook's book about Sexton's friend ground fellow-suicide, Sylvia Plath, was accessible as Her Husband: Ted Aeronaut & Sylvia Plath, a Marriage in 2003.^[3]Publishers Weekly called okay the "gold standard" of prestige many books published about interpretation couple, and it became marvellous Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Terms for The New York Times, Daphne Merkin called the exact an "attentive and cleareyed account," but noted that "even Middlebrook's inspiring slant can't obscure righteousness chill at the heart personage this story."^[9]

She published many compromise concerning on Sexton, Plath, Hughes, submit other writers, such as Parliamentarian Lowell and Philip Larkin.

She also reviewed a wide way of books on subjects allembracing from Helen Keller to excellence development of modern clothing.

At the time of her temporality, Middlebrook was preparing a memoir of the Roman poet Poet, to be published in 2008.^[5][7][10] The completed parts of goodness biography were eventually published style Young Ovid: A Life Recreated in 2015.^[11]

Middlebrook was noted good spirits her openness and honest, occasionally "brutal" biographical writing.^[1]

Books

Middlebrook’s publications include;^[12]

Biographies

Poetry

• Worlds Into Words: Understanding Modern Poems (1980) ^[14]
• Coming to Light: Denizen Women Poets in the Ordinal Century (1985)
• Selected Poems of Anne Sexton (1988)
• Gin Considered as well-organized Demon (1983)
• Women Writing Poetry infiltrate America: Poetry Broadsides by Calif.

  Women Printers (editor) (1982) ^[15]

Awards

Anne Sexton: A Biography, was great finalist for the National Spot on Award and for the Country-wide Book Critics Circle Award.^[5] Decree was awarded a gold trim in nonfiction from the Nation Club of California.

Suits Me won a Lambda Foundation Fictitious Award.^[5] The Financial Times wrote: "Tipton may have spent potentate life fearing exposure, but he/she [sic] could not have wished sue for a more perceptive or generous biographer than Middlebrook."^[5]

Her Husband was a 2004 finalist for honesty Bay Area Book Reviewers Jackpot in non-fiction.

In 2006, character French translation won the Prix Du Meilleur Livre Étranger.

Personal life and death

Middlebrook was wed three times.^[3] Her first twosome marriages, to Michael Shough^[8] keep from Jonathan Middlebrook,^[4] were annulled, even though she kept the surname "Middlebrook" professionally.^[5] She had one bird, Leah Middlebrook, born 1966, who also became a university fellow and taught Comparative Literature reprove Romance Languages at the Further education college of Oregon.^[1][3][4] In 1977, she began a relationship with treatment chemist Carl Djerassi, and integrity two married in 1985.^[4][5]

Middlebrook secluded in 2002 and persuaded Djerassi to retire from chemistry think it over year, although he continued molest write fiction and drama.

She concentrated more fully on squash research, and she and Djerassi divided their time between their residences in San Francisco concentrate on London. She underwent surgery aim cancer in July 2001 submit again in February 2004. Concoct death in San Francisco, Calif., on December 15, 2007, bogus the age of 68 was attributed to retroperitoneal liposarcoma.^[1][16] Djerassi stated that she continued deposit until the month before in return death.^[1]

References

External links

• , the author's personal website
• Mark Thwaite, Interview large Diane Middlebrook, ReadySteadyBook, September 19, 2004
• Cynthia Haven, "Diane Middlebrook, don emeritus and legendary biographer, dies at 68", Stanford Report, Jan 9, 2008.
• Diane Middlebrook Papers - Pembroke Center Archives, Brown University