Between 1955 and 1962, writer Sylvia Plath finished her undergraduate education at Smith College in Boston, earnned a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge, and met the love of her life, fellow poet Ted Hughes. It was then that Plath produced a large oeuvre of writing, iconic works including poems like “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea,” and her semi-autobiographical novel about struggling with depression, "The Bell Jar."

During that period, Plath used her pen not only for writing, but to draw. Her artwork from this period along with her 1962 poem, "Brasilia," are currently on display at London's Mayor Gallery through December 18 in an exhibition titled, "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings," which marks the first time the drawings will be shown as a group in the United Kingdom. Her art, which Ted Hughes gave their daughter Frieda Hughes a few years before his death in 1998, gives fans another view into Plath's complex thought process.

The pen and ink drawings — mostly still life — depict Plath's travels through Europe while studying at Cambridge, along with architecture and seemingly mundane objects, like a fruit bowl, a cow eating grass, and a lunch box. Drawings also illustrate journal passages, some possibly linked to her other works. A drawing of kitten-heeled shoes recall a pair she mentions in chapter 12 of "The Bell Jar": "I had removed my patent leather shoes after a while, for they foundered badly in the sand. It pleased me to think they would be perched there on a silver log pointing out to sea, like a sort of soul-compass after I was dead." On March 16, 1956, she wrote in her journal about drawing in Paris: "Then, inspired, I took my sketch book and squatted in the sun at the very end of the Île de la Cité in a little green park of Henri 4 du Vert Galant & began to draw the vista through the Pont Neuf; it was a good composition with the arches."

Plath saved her best work to accompany her essays, including a drawing of what Plath called, “a colorful pattern of rounds and oblongs, knobs and wheels, legs and handles,” which illustrated a Christian Science Monitor essay titled “Explorations Lead to Interesting Discoveries,” in which she discovers an abandoned garage.

Plath’s life was cut short when she committed suicide in 1963 at age 30, following a long battle with depression and her break-up with Hughes. Her brilliant writing went on to earn her a posthumous Pulitzer Prize — the first ever — in 1982 for “The Collected Poems.”

Click on the photo gallery above to see images from “Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings,” on view at London’s Mayor Gallery through December 18.