Reading Order
The Bell Jar Reading Order
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963) is a complete standalone novel, published one month before Plath's death at age thirty. It is her only novel. The book follows Esther Greenwood, a young woman from a small Massachusetts town who wins a summer internship at a New York fashion magazine and then experiences a severe mental breakdown. The novel is closely autobiographical — Plath suffered a serious breakdown in 1953 and underwent electroconvulsive therapy, which is depicted in the novel.
Where to start
The Bell Jar
Complete The Bell Jar Book List
- 1Buy
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath·1963·Standalone — Esther Greenwood's mental breakdown in 1950s New York and Massachusetts; Plath's only novel, published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas a month before her death; reissued under her own name in 1966 - Buy
Ariel
OptionalSylvia Plath·1965·Plath's final poetry collection, published posthumously — the poems written in the months before her death, widely considered among the most powerful in twentieth-century American poetry; a natural companion to The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar — Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Bell Jar a standalone?
Yes — The Bell Jar is entirely self-contained and is Plath's only novel. She published two collections of poetry during her lifetime, The Colossus (1960) and Ariel (1965, posthumous), but no other fiction.
Is The Bell Jar autobiographical?
Very closely. Esther Greenwood's experiences track Plath's own almost exactly — the summer at Mademoiselle magazine in New York in 1953 (which Plath attended on a guest-editorship), the breakdown that followed, the suicide attempt, the electroconvulsive therapy, and the treatment at a private psychiatric hospital funded by a benefactor. Plath published the novel under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in part to protect the real people she had depicted and in part because she did not consider it a serious literary work — she called it a 'pot-boiler.' It was reissued under her own name in 1966, three years after her death.
How did Sylvia Plath die?
Sylvia Plath died on February 11, 1963, of carbon monoxide poisoning in her London apartment — she sealed the kitchen door with towels and turned on the gas oven. Her children were asleep in the next room. She was thirty years old. The Bell Jar had been published one month earlier. Plath had struggled with depression throughout her adult life, had made earlier suicide attempts, and had been undergoing treatment in the period before her death. Her death, and the publication of Ariel in 1965, made her one of the most widely read poets in the English language.
What is the bell jar metaphor in the novel?
Esther Greenwood describes her depression as being trapped under a bell jar — a glass bell used in laboratories to create a vacuum, which in her case traps her inside her own suffocating air and distorts her view of the world through curved glass. The metaphor captures both the isolation of depression (the inability to connect with anyone outside the glass) and its physical quality — the sense of having one's air replaced with something stale and unbreathable.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.