- New Arrivals
Fiction- Historical FictionCrime & ThrillersMysteryScience-FictionFantasyPoetryRomanceChildren’s BooksYoung Adult
- Biographies & MemoirsHistoryCurrent AffairsTech & ScienceBusinessSelf-DevelopmentTravelThe ArtsFood & WineReligion & SpiritualitySportsHumor
Children’s BooksListsGift CardsWhat To ReadMy ListsGames- About & Help
- About Tertulia
- Membership & Co-Ownership
- Shipping & Delivery
- Orders & Payments
- Contact Support
- Send App Feedback
- Follow us
- Download the app
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
The Bell Jar
Reader Score
90%
90% of readers
recommend this book
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels
"A coming-of-age masterpiece. . . . Sylvia Plath has become one of the influential writers of her time." --Boston Globe
Sylvia Plath's masterwork--an acclaimed and enduring novel about a young woman falling into the grip of mental illness and societal pressures
Esther Greenwood is a bright, beautiful, enormously talented young woman, but she's slowly going under--maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her neurosis becomes palpably real, even rational--as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.
This edition features extra insights into the book and author.
Book Details
- Publisher: Harper Perennial
- Publish Date: Aug 2nd, 2005
- Pages: 288
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.02in - 5.30in - 0.70in - 0.48lb
- EAN: 9780060837020
- Categories: • Literary• Classics• Women
About the Author
Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.
More books by Sylvia Plath
What people are saying
"Sylvia Plath scolded herself for not managing to write a novel. Yet she did write one, and it’s brilliant. The Bell Jar is an autobiographical account of being a young woman... is a novel that teems with the contempt and self-loathing that flourishes in an oppressed girl’s heart."
"I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath when I was only 12 years old. The scene after she’s had an abortion made a lasting impact on me. I think a lot of my feminist rage may have been born in that moment."
A daily literary website highlighting the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and criticism.
"If people are sick of talking about Plath, maybe it’s because she doesn’t give us the ending we want." Savannah Marciezyk (@savs_thoughts) on "The Bell Jar," "The Midnight Library," and female suicide narratives. https://lithub.com/all-our-possible-lives-on-sylvia-plath-matt-haig-and-the-female-suicide-narrative/
Praise for this book
"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
What people are saying
"Sylvia Plath scolded herself for not managing to write a novel. Yet she did write one, and it’s brilliant. The Bell Jar is an autobiographical account of being a young woman... is a novel that teems with the contempt and self-loathing that flourishes in an oppressed girl’s heart."
"I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath when I was only 12 years old. The scene after she’s had an abortion made a lasting impact on me. I think a lot of my feminist rage may have been born in that moment."