One of America's most talented poets, Anne Sexton consistently engaged readers with her personal and heartfelt work. Critics also agreed and she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967. Though successful in her career, Sexton's private life often suffered due to past trauma and mental illness. In 1974, at the early age of 45, she ended up committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. She was buried in Boston, Massachusetts.
Sexton succeeded in ending her own life, but it was not her first try. After one of her previous attempts she worked with a therapist, who used hypnosis to uncover repressed childhood memories. This treatment ended up revealing memories of childhood sexual abuse by her own father. Sexton's daughter, Linda, claims that her mother abused her, thus perpetuating the vicious cycle we've all been able to observe in survivors.