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Robert Lowell (1917—1977) American poet

John Berryman (1914—1972)

Anne Sexton (1928—1974)

Sylvia Plath (1932—1963) poet and writer

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confessional poetry


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A term principally applied to the self‐revealing style of writing and use of intimate subject matter adopted and pioneered in America by R. Lowell (Life Studies, 1959): other writers in the tradition have included Berryman, Sexton, and Plath. A new wave of confessional writing in prose occurred in the 1980s and 1990s when a vogue for autobiographical material, family history, and frank memoirs coincided in Britain with a new sense of male interest in domestic and psychological matters hitherto regarded as predominantly female terrain: this resulted in ‘New Man’ writing by Blake Morrison, Nick Hornby and others.

Subjects: Literature


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