The Bell Jar
By: Sylvia Plath; forward by Frances McCulough ; P.S. biographical note by Ois Ames; Drawings by Sylvia Plath
Edition: P.S. Edition; 1st Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition (7)
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2006
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: Trade Paperback
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780060837020
Copyright date: 1998
Subjects: Depression, Mental -- Fiction; Suicidal behavior -- Fiction
First sentence: IT WAS A QUEER, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
Description: The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
(back cover)
Notes: USA