Fragments | A

Blonde, incredibly beautiful and an all-too short life that was brilliant like a dying star — these are the things that Marilyn Monroe is best remembered for. As one of the most notable actresses of her time, her legend has long endured since then as a veritable pop culture symbol. In Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe, a far more personal side of Monroe is revealed through her private writings, collected from journals, notebooks and scraps of papers from her journeys.

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926 and given up immediately to a foster family, Monroe grew up fast. She married Jim Dougherty at the young age of 16 to escape a future of foster family trade-offs. This is where her writing starts, with a typed analytical insight into her life as a teenage wife. Her writing here is amazingly mature, discerning and highly poetic in form. Despite many jaded observations, she remained strongly optimistic in outlook and it is easy to see how someone with such an enduring personality would go on to become one of Hollywood's brightest stars.

The rest of her writings are arranged chronologically, with a majority written during her marriage to the famous playwright Arthur Miller. Her writings are accompanied with many rare and previously unreleased personal photographs. These photos are stunning and lovely in their intimacy, many showing Monroe with various novels in hand, reading in pure delight and looking far happier than she ever did posing sensually for the camera. She was a veritable bibliophile, having kept a library of nearly 400 books during her lifetime, which contained everything from Dostoyevsky and Milton to contemporary writers of the time such as Hemingway, Beckett and Kerouac.

But her intelligence and sensitive nature were quickly outshined by her gilded glamorous image in Hollywood. Beyond her light wordplay and charming remarks were also darker, more turbulent undercurrents of a woman who suffered deeply from depression and a never-ending fear of disappointing those around her. Arthur Miller once famously wrote about her, "She was a poet on a street corner, trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes."

Her life cannot be summed up simply by her movies, photographs or notorious legend. But it is thanks to these fragments that we are able to see beyond the surface to the lonely and vulnerably beautiful woman beneath. In his song "Candle in the Wind," written 10 years after her death, Elton John sums it up best, "Goodbye Norma Jeane … loneliness was tough, the toughest role you ever played/Hollywood created a superstar, and pain was the price you paid… your candle burned out long before your legend ever did."