Harper Academic

The Bell Jar

A Novel

by Sylvia Plath

On Sale: 06/11/2013

Price: $20.00

The Bell Jar

A Novel

by Sylvia Plath

On Sale: 06/11/2013

Format:

Price: $20.00

About the Book

A new edition of the classic novel, featuring a foreword by the original Harper & Row editor who reveals the untold story of the book's first publication. Originally published under a pseudonym in England in 1963, shortly after Plath committed suicide, the book was published for the first time under Plath's real name by Harper & Row in 1971, despite the protests of the Plath family. This extraordinary work chronicles the crackup of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful-and slowly going under. Largely autobiographical, the novel reveals much about the sources of Plath's own tragedy.

Critical Praise

“It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath’s voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal and make it as meaningful . . . as it was 25 years ago.” — USA Today

“Esther Greenwood’s account of her years in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing. . . . [This] is not a potboiler, nor a series of ungrateful caricatures: it is literature.” — New York Times

“The first-person narrative fixes us there, in the doctor’s office, in the asylum, in the madness, with no reassuring vacations when we can keep company with the sane and listen to their lectures.” — Washington Post Book World

“The narrator simply describes herself as feeling very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel. The in-between moment is just what Miss Plath’s poetry does catch brilliantly—the moment poised on the edge of chaos.” — Christian Science Monitor

“As clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing.” — New York Times

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Product Details

  • ISBN: 9780061148514
  • ISBN 10: 0061148512
  • Imprint: Harper Perennial
  • On Sale: 06/11/2013
  • Trimsize: 5.500 in (w) x 8.250 in (h) x 0.720 in (d)
  • Pages: 288
  • List Price: $20.00
  • BISAC1 : FICTION / Classics
  • BISAC2 : FICTION / Literary
  • BISAC3 : FICTION / Coming of Age
  • BISAC4 : FICTION / Contemporary Women