Biographer Diane Middlebrook dies

SAN FRANCISCO – Diane Middlebrook, a leading feminist scholar who wrote acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, died Saturday. She was 68.

Middlebrook, who helped launch feminist studies at Stanford University, where she taught literature for 35 years, died of cancer in San Francisco.

She is best known for her 1991 best-seller “Anne Sexton: A Biography,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and “Her Husband: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, a Marriage,” a 2003 best-seller about the tumultuous marriage of the poets.

Middlebrook also wrote “Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton,” a 1998 biography about a female jazz musician who lived as a man. Tipton lived for 20 years in Spokane, performing in various local nightspots as the piano-playing leader of the Billy Tipton trio.

Middlebrook’s biography about the Roman poet Ovid is expected to be published next year to coincide with the 2,000th anniversary of his birth.

“I think her legacy as a biographer is her incredible humanity,” said author Kate Moses, one of many writers and artists encouraged by Middlebrook. “She never sacrificed humanity in maintaining an acute critical recognition of her subject.”

Born in Idaho in 1939, Middlebrook grew up in Spokane, graduating from North Central High School in 1957. She graduated from the University of Washington in 1961 and earned her doctorate at Yale University in 1968.

Survivors include her daughter, two sisters, stepson, stepgrandson and husband, Carl Djerassi, professor emeritus of chemistry at Stanford.