Anne Gray Harvey Sexton turned to poetry as a release from years of depression and mental illness. That was the context of her work. The content, however, is some of the most accomplished in the canon of twentieth–century American literature. Her "confessional" and "personal" poetry is credited with opening some of the most sensitive experiences of women for exploration in fine art.

Neither Anne's education in a Boston finishing school nor her decision to elope before the age of twenty anticipated a career at the center of twentieth-century American literature. After eight years of marriage and the birth of two daughters, she found herself in and out of psychological counseling for chronic depression. At the suggestion of her psychiatrist that she try poetry as a way of expurgating her demons, Anne began writing seriously in 1956.

From a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education, Anne Sexton found her way into Robert Lowell's seminar on poetry at Boston University where she met Maxine Kumin and Sylvia Plath. In her 1960 collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, Sexton revealed some of the most poignant experiences of her psychosis, characterized originally by her mentors as far too personal for publication. She never escaped the manacles of her illness, however, and she died in 1974, a victim to suicide.